Alex Ross Music

Listen cover

I'm happy to present the cover for my next book, Listen To This, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish on September 28th. The UK edition will appear in January 2011, courtesy of Fourth Estate. The table of contents is as follows:

Part I

1. Listen to This: Crossing the Border from Classical to Pop

2. Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History

3. Infernal Machines: How Recordings Changed Music

Part II

4. The Storm of Style: Mozart’s Golden Mean

5. Orbiting: Radiohead’s Grand Tour

6. The Anti-Maestro: Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic

7. Great Soul: Searching for Schubert

8. Emotional Landscapes: Björk’s Saga

9. Symphony of Millions: Classical Music in China

10. Song of the Earth: The Arctic Sound of John Luther Adams

11. Verdi’s Grip: Opera as a Popular Art

12. Almost Famous: On the Road with the St. Lawrence Quartet

13. Edges of Pop: Kiki and Herb, Cecil Taylor and Sonic Youth, Sinatra, Kurt Cobain

14. Learning the Score: The Crisis in Music Education

15. Voice of the Century: Marian Anderson

16. The Music Mountain: Mitsuko Uchida at Marlboro

Part III

17. I Saw the Light: Following Bob Dylan

18. Fervor: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

19. Blessed Are the Sad: Late Brahms

Listen To This

I have a habit of finishing books in hotels. I sent off The Rest Is Noise from the Omni in downtown Los Angeles; Listen To This, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish at the end of September, was dispatched last week from a Marriott in Park City, Utah. The new book offers a panoramic view of the musical scene, taking in Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Verdi, Brahms, Marian Anderson, Frank Sinatra, Cecil Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Björk, Radiohead, Mitsuko Uchida, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Luther Adams, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Bob Dylan, and the Malcolm X Shabazz High School Marching Band. In the Preface, I say that the aim is to "approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world." The book includes material already published in The New Yorker as well as pieces written or heavily revised for the occasion. The first chapter, from which the title comes, appeared in the magazine in 2004. The second chapter, "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues," is entirely new — a rapid-moving history of music told through bass lines. The third chapter, "Infernal Machines," weaves together various thoughts on music and technology. And it goes from there. At some point, this site will be redesigned in order to incorporate an audio companion for the new book; the Rest Is Noise material will, of course, remain. I hope you like it!

On to the next project: Wagnerism.

Noise everywhere

The phrase "The rest is noise" keeps showing up in unexpected places. Earlier I noted the opening of the club The Rest Is Noise in Brixton, London:

The Armed Forces, a Nashville-based gutter-pop band, has released its debut album:

And don't miss this mix tape by Bodega Bamz:

 

Korova, an Alabama hardcore band that has listed John Cage and Philip Glass among its influences, has a song called "The Rest Is Noise," which ends thus:

    The tragic sovereignty of adult life
    Has fought us tooth and nail
    These verses are bleak
    But they're mine.

Fight on, noise brothers. On a lighter note, the British pop band Field Music promises "multilayered riffery" in "The Rest Is Noise," on an album due next month.

Happy New Year

Audio guide reminder (EU edition)

Audio-Samples zum Buch The Rest Is Noise: Das 20. Jahrhundert hören finden Sie hier.

Para los ejemplos de audio relacionados con el libro El ruido eterno, vaya aquí.

Per esempi musicali dal libro Il resto è rumore vai qui.

My new blog, Unquiet Thoughts, is here.

Spanish noise

I'm pleased and amazed that El ruido eterno, as The Rest Is Noise is known in Spain, is currently listed as the No. 1 non-fiction bestseller (castellano) by La Vanguardia. I will make a brief trip to Spain next week, appearing at the Spanish National Library in Madrid at 7 PM on Nov. 2; the International Institute in Madrid at 7 PM on Nov. 3; and Librería La Central in Barcelona at 1 PM on Nov. 4. I'm tremendously grateful to my Spanish publisher, Seix Barral, and also to the U.S. Embassy Madrid for helping to arrange this trip.

Update, 12/1: El ruido eterno has now been on the bestseller list for seven weeks.

End and beginning

I've launched a new blog on the New Yorker website. It's called Unquiet Thoughts, after the John Dowland part-song, and it will offer many of the features that readers have come to expect from this site: the hilarity, the profundity, the delicious recipes. Given the close relationship between my New Yorker writing and my adventures in blogging, it makes more sense to bring all of my activity under the magazine's exacting aegis. The present site will remain intact, with a focus on my books and related material. I'll continue to augment the audio resources and post fresh material from time to time. I'd like to give ardent thanks to longtime readers for their kind and close attention to this blog. The noise will never die.

Photo: Panamint Valley, 1999.

In praise of SeatGuru

Some time ago I stumbled across SeatGuru.com, and it has made me a happier traveler. It's a site that allows you to investigate the internal properties of various airplanes and locate more favorable seats. For example, with regard to the Boeing 767-200, one is told that seats 16K and 16L "have some extra legroom due to a cutout in the bulkhead," and that "many flyers enjoy the quiet and private feel of this mini-cabin," although "it can get very cold" and there is some danger of a baby situation. On my flight home from Spain, I had a lovely time in 16K, despite the cold, and felt tempted to say to my neighbor, "Don't you enjoy the quiet and private feel of this mini-cabin?" Fortunately, I stayed silent and read Anna Karenina watched Battlestar Galactica.

For Suzanne Fiol

Tragic news from Brooklyn: Suzanne Fiol, the founder of the experimental music venue ISSUE Project Room, has died of cancer at the age of forty-nine. She will be desperately missed.

Dudamel begins

 

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a firework-enhanced encore of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth, at the Hollywood Bowl. On October 8 Dudamel makes his directorial debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall; KUSC-FM will provide a live broadcast. I'll write about Dudamel a little later in the season.