Author Archives: Jeremy Denk

Chopin’s for Dummies

By Jeremy Denk | Published: November 30, 2009
When I mention to people I’ve played Chopin on my recitals lately, I tend to get a curious reaction–a slightly sour look with a parental, passive-aggressive question mark swirling around in it. Oh, dear, really? From their oblique remarks I glean an implication: why would you play Chopin, since you are a supposedly thinking person [...]
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Missing me one place search another

By Jeremy Denk | Published: September 17, 2009
Regular readers might recall, I won’t ever forget, that I went not so long ago to visit the composer Leon Kirchner, and he jokingly compared me to Walt Whitman. I hadn’t read Whitman’s verse since high school, and even at my hormonal heights, penning maudlin teen poetry by the rhyming bushel, I found him over [...]
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Legislating From My Bench

By Jeremy Denk | Published: September 10, 2009
Something leapt out at me in the President’s speech last night: My American ingenuity was stirred and perhaps even plucked; well heck, goshdarnit!, why not craft my own healthcare bill? Everybody’s doing it. How hard can it really be? … 111th Congress 1st Session HR _________, To provide affordable mental health care for American pianists; [...]
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Hot Seattle, Flirty Brahms

By Jeremy Denk | Published: August 5, 2009
A week of 90s in Seattle … my hostess and I are both heading down delirium’s loopy driveway. The notes on the piano that I don’t feel like practicing swim in the heat. I flee to an air conditioned coffeeshop. Outside, nothing but blue sky and hipsters in shorts. The trembling tattooed hand of the [...]
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