Alex Ross (music critic)

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Alex Ross
File:Alex Ross @ Chicago Humanities festival (cropped).png
Born (1968-01-12) 12 January 1968 (age 56)
Washington, D.C.
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation
Known for The Rest Is Noise (2007)
Listen to This (2011)
Wagnerism (2020)
Notable credit(s) <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Awards MacArthur Fellowship
Belmont Prize
Full list
Website www.therestisnoise.com

Alex Ross (born 12 January 1968) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. A staff member of The New Yorker magazine since 1996, his extensive writings include performance and record reviews, industry updates, cultural commentary and historical narratives in the realm of classical music.[1] He has written three well-received books: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007), Listen to This (2011), and Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (2020).

A graduate of Harvard University and student of composer Peter Lieberson, from 1992 to 1996 Ross was a critic for The New York Times. He has received wide acclaim for his publications; The Rest Is Noise was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and his other awards and honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and the Belmont Prize. He maintains a popular classical music blog, The Rest is Noise.[2]

Life and career

Alex Ross was born on 12 January 1968 in Washington, D.C.[3] He attended the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, graduating in 1983.[4][n 1] He was a 1990 graduate of Harvard University, where he studied under composer Peter Lieberson and was a DJ on the classical and underground rock departments of the college radio station, WHRB.[6] During his time at Harvard he first began music criticism, writing reviews for Fanfare, a classical music magazine.[6]

From 1992 to 1996 Ross was a music critic at The New York Times. He also wrote for The New Republic, Slate, the London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, Fanfare and Feed. He first contributed to The New Yorker in 1993 and became a staff writer in 1996, succeeding Paul Griffiths.[6]

He married director Jonathan Lisecki in Canada in 2006.[7] Ross is now based in New York City,[8] living in Chelsea, Manhattan.[7]

His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a cultural history of music since 1900, was released in the U.S. in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in the U.K. in 2008. The book received widespread critical praise in the U.S., garnering a National Book Critics Circle Award, a spot on The New York Times list of the ten best books of 2007, and a finalist citation for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. The book was also shortlisted for the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction.[9][10] His second book, Listen to This, was released in the U.S. in September 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and was published in the U.K. in November 2010. In September 2020, his third book Wagnerism came out.[11][12]

Ross maintains a popular classical music blog, The Rest is Noise.[2] The musicologist Lars Helgert described the blog as "among the most highly regarded web resources for classical music criticism".[1]

Selected bibliography

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Main article: Alex Ross bibliography
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Awards and honors

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship (2008),[13] three ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music writing, and a Holtzbrinck fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.[8] In 2012 he received the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music at the pèlerinages Art Festival in Weimar.[14] In 2016, he was awarded the Champion of New Music award by the American Composers Forum.[15]

Notes

  1. ↑ Ross names various teachers at the Potomac School as particularly impactful on his education: Paul Piazza, Paul Barrett, Ted Eagles, Sandy Larson, Don Brown, Vaughn Keith, and Jack McCune.[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Helgert 2013, "5. Since 1960".
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Sources

Further reading

External links

Preceded by Music Critic of The New Yorker
1996–		 Succeeded by
incumbent
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