The Honolulu Chamber Music Series brings acclaimed pianist and writer Jeremy Denk to the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Orvis Auditorium for a wide-ranging recital next Sunday.
A true Renaissance man — an expert in many fields — Denk has just released his memoir, titled “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (a mnemonic for learning music notation). A coming-of-age story blended with fascinating observations about music, it’s reminiscent of his blog, Think Denk, which has entertained music lovers around the world with its stream-of-consciousness musings about music.
“I told (concert pianist) Mitsuko Uchida once that I might have trouble choosing between Chopin and Schubert, and the storm that crossed her brow would have shut down the airports for days,” he wrote in one post, an example of what his friend once called his “unusual way with words.”
“The blog allowed me to connect this music that many people find a little bit distant or alien to really day-to-day stuff, and try to show a kind of relationship with classical music that’s irreverent, and funny, and sad,” said Denk, who in addition to being a piano prodigy graduated from high school two years early with honors in writing and math.
His blog resulted in a banner year for Denk in 2013, when he was selected for a MacArthur Fellows Program “genius grant.” The blog also was chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress’ web archive that year.
On stage, his piano performance was being held in equally high regard. “He is a pianist whose fresh insights in familiar territory warrant continued acquaintance,” wrote The New York Times that year, while his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts.
In his memoir, Denk notes that critics often describe his playing as “mercurial.” That could refer to his fleet fingers, but it also applies to the agility of his mind in his approach to music, such as his program at Orvis. It features four works inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Denk found “violence” in two pieces: “Battle for Manassas,” written by blind, enslaved child pianist Thomas Wiggins shortly after the Confederate victory in 1861, which “glorified something that’s also enslaving him,” and Frederic Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.” Aside from portraying aspects of Civil War culture, both pieces feature loud, percussive cluster chords, played with the elbow crunching down on the keyboard.
“It seemed to me that to create a meaningful sweep, there should be pieces with less violence to set them off,” Denk said. So he’ll also play two lyrical works, “Heliotrope Bouquet” by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin, and a “ravishing” arrangement of the spiritual “They Will Not Lend Me a Child” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
The concert also will feature classical favorites, such as a Bach Partita that opens with long improvisational movement. It shows “the virtuoso with great integrity working at the same time, sort of the Jimi Hendrix of the time,” Denk said. He will finish the evening with Beethoven’s monumental final piano sonata, Opus 111, which shows “the emergence of jazz.”
“I must confess I just love Beethoven 111 because I think it’s one of the most wonderful and weird pieces ever written,” Denk said.
Denk is in constant demand not only as a performer but also as a teacher. Last year he gave an online masterclass through the Hawai‘i Music Teachers Association for some local piano students.
“There’s an incredible amount of great music playing and musicianship,” he said of young musicians today. “At the same time, there are some traditions that are gradually being lost. Not to harp on my book, but a part of it is to preserve some of my teachers’ beautiful thoughts.”
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Honolulu Chamber Music Series presents pianist Jeremy Denk
>> When: 7 p.m. April 10
>> Where: Orvis Auditorium, University of Hawaii at Manoa
>> Cost: $15-$45
>> Info: honoluluchambermusicseries.org
