Alex Ross

Alex Ross has been the music critic for The New Yorker since 1996. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. He is the author of The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), a sweeping cultural history of the 20th century and its music. The book won several awards, including the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, the 2008 Guardian First Book Award, and a 2010 Premio Napoli prize in foreign literature. It was one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2007 and a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction. Ross' second book, Listen to This (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), is a collection of his writings from The New Yorker. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008 and has received numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism; a Holtzbrinck Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin; a Fleck Fellowship from the Banff Centre; and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. In December 2007, Ross visited The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to discuss The Rest Is Noise.