Author Archives: Jeremy Denk

Schubert’s Killer Abs

At least Hester Prynne got an “A” for her adultery. I’ve searched the alphabet up and down, and I can’t find a letter to testify to my shame. Of all the sinful confessions of Think Denk, ranging from lonely Cheetos to promiscuous metaphors, this is the darkest and deepest. Here goes:         Monday night, I went [...]

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Chopin’s for Dummies

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

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

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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