Nonesuch releases pianist Jeremy Denk's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on September 30 (October 21 internationally), available for pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store. The album includes a companion DVD with video "liner notes," on which Denk demonstrates passages on the piano as he explains certain details of the iconic piece. Watch an excerpt here. The New York Times has remarked on Denk's "profound affinity with Bach," and the Philadelphia Inquirer has called his performance of the Goldberg Variations "mesmerizing." Denk plays in 15 US cities this fall including a performance of the Goldberg Variations in Boston, Chicago, and DC and concerts with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Krannert Center.

Pianist Jeremy Denk makes his Australian debut with a performance at Newcastle City Hall on Monday, August 12, kicking off a two-week tour of the country with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) led by conductor, artistic director, and lead violinist Richard Tognetti. The tour—featuring works by Bach, Ligeti, Ives, and Brahms—continues with performances in Adelaide and Perth, followed by several stops in Sydney, and rounds out with dates in Wollongong and Melbourne.

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2013–14 concert season, which will feature performances from a number of Nonesuch artists: Kronos Quartet, which celebrates its 40th anniversary with two concerts at Zellerbach Hall; Joshua Redman, whose Quartet performs songs from his new album, Walking Shadows; and Richard Goode, performing music by Janáček, Schubert, and Debussy. Additionally, Cal Performances and the Ojai Music Festival present Ojai North!, of which pianist Jeremy Denk is this season's music director.

Jeremy Denk has written a personal history for The New Yorker titled "Every Good Boy Does Fine: A life in piano lessons." In the article, his second contribution to the magazine, Denk offers insight on the relationship between music students and teachers by recounting a few such relationships in his own life. The New York Times, reviewing Denk's solo recital at Carnegie Hall last week, says his “colossal interpretations conveyed the sense of composers grappling with the ineffable, inventing new vocabulary to express the inexpressible." Following his recent solo debut at Boston's Jordan Hall, the Boston Globe exclaimed: “Denk gave a revelatory performance ... It would be foolish to understate how remarkably talented he is.” 

Following last week's insight on the year's best in music according to Uncut, Mojo, and Paste, which featured several Nonesuch artists, come three more noteworthy year-end lists from Rolling Stone, NPR Music, and American Songwriter. They tip their respective hats to artists including Amadou & Mariam, Dr. John, Randy Newman, Fatoumata Diawara, Jeremy Denk, Lianne La Havas, and Punch Brothers.

Pianist Jeremy Denk recently invited NPR into his NYC apartment as he prepared his "piano boot camp" to practice the Ligeti Piano Etudes featured on his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, for a video posted last week. Now come the performances themselves: three etudes from Book 1—"Fanfares," "Arc-en-ciel," and "Automne à Varsovie." Watch them here.

Last week, the staff at NPR Music announced their 25 Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far), including Dr. John's Locked Down and Jeremy Denk's Ligeti/Beethoven. NPR listeners have now weighed in. Their list of the year's best albums (so far) includes those two albums and adds Amadou & Mariam's Folila, Sara Watkins' Sun Midnight Sun, and the new album of works by Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood. Says NPR: "The poll results reconfirmed that we've got another great year of music on our hands."

Pianist Jeremy Denk invited NPR into his NYC apartment as he sat down to practice the Ligeti Piano Etudes featured on his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven. Watch the resulting video here. NPR Music recently named Ligeti/Beethoven one of its 25 Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far), saying Denk's "technical prowess, insight, wit and ardor have resulted in an album that people are going to be talking about for years to come."

NPR Music has named its 25 Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far); among them are Dr. John's Locked Down and Jeremy Denk's Ligeti/Beethoven. "Locked Down is one of the best albums of his lengthy career," says NPR of Dr. John. "This isn't Disneyland-style New Orleans; this is the city filtered through vintage R&B and gritty funk, that spooky, swampy side of New Orleans music that drew so many to Dr. John early on." NPR says of Denk's pairing of Ligeti and Beethoven: "What makes the seemingly impossible a reality is Jeremy Denk's genius—his technical prowess, insight, wit and ardor have resulted in an album that people are going to be talking about for years to come." Amadou & Mariam's song "Dougou Badia" is among NPR's 50 Favorite Songs of 2012 (So Far).

Jeremy Denk, whose Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven, has debuted at #9 on Billboard's Traditional Classical chart, is featured on WNET's NYC-ARTS. He talks to the show about his career in music, his writing, and the impetus behind Ligeti/Beethoven, performing pieces from the new album as well. Denk has "steadily built a reputation as one of today's most compelling artists," says host Paula Zahn. "He is a man of prodigious talent, with a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity." Watch the segment here.

Jeremy Denk is the guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. Denk discusses his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, which pairs Ligeti’s Piano Études, Books One and Two, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111. "Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before, and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before," Denk tells Gross. "But all of it is derived from ideas from earlier piano etudes and his love of the great piano repertoire." He goes on to say: "The last Beethoven sonata seems to me [to be] one of the most profound musical journeys to infinity ever made ... The whole piece seems to want to bring us from a present moment into this timeless space where everything is continuous and endless."

Jeremy Denk marks the release of his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, with a performance at NYC's (Le) Poisson Rouge tonight. It's a Critics' Pick in Time Out New York and in New York, which calls him "splendid." The New Yorker calls the program "irresistible." WNYC has made it today's Gig Alert. The Washington Post says of Saturday's performance of the program in DC: "Denk has a way of explicating complicated music by playing it so that it seems self-evident and absolutely graspable—a considerable gift." In a new essay for Newsweek, Denk writes of having chosen a career in music over chemistry: "I knew I wouldn’t cure cancer or anything, but I might discover some beautiful way of playing something that no one else had found."