Alex Ross (music critic)

Alex Ross (born 1968) is an American music critic. He has been on the staff of "The New Yorker" magazine since 1996 and published an important book on 20th-century classical music in 2007.

Ross is a 1986 graduate of St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. and a 1990 graduate of Harvard University, where he studied under composer Peter Lieberson and was a classical music DJ for the college radio station, WHRB. He earned a Harvard A.B. in English "summa cum laude" for a thesis on James Joyce.

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.

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 non-fiction. The book was also shortlisted for the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. [cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/books/features/samueljohnson/shortlist.shtml |title=BBC Four - 2008 Shortlist for Samuel Johnson Prize]

He has received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism and a Holtzbrinck fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.

Alex Ross married his partner, director Jonathan Lisecki, in Canada in 2006.citation |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/07/usa.classicalmusic |title=You'll happily be taken along for the ride |periodical=The Guardian |date=November 7, 2007 |first=Christopher |last=Bonanos |accessdate=2008-08-12]

Publications

* cite book
last = Ross
first = Alex
title = The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux
date = 2007
location = New York
isbn = 9780374249397

External links

* [http://www.therestisnoise.com "The Rest is Noise"] . Articles, a blog, and a book.
* [http://www.observer.com/2007/man-who-loves-salome "The Best Listener in America"] - Alex Ross profile in "The New York Observer", 9 October 2007

Reviews

* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21770 The 'Mash of Myriad Sounds'] Michael Kimmelman review of "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" from "The New York Review of Books"
* [http://www.slate.com/id/2200716/ The Big Rewind: How The Rest Is Noise changes our understanding of 20th-century music] , by Jan Swafford

References