Alex Ross

Music critic on the staff of The New Yorker since 1996. Published The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, (2007), a cultural history of twentieth-century music that journeys through pre-World War I Vienna, Paris of the 1920s, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and New York of the 1960s and 1970s. Book garnered 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. Through his blog, he champions overlooked composers and out-of-the-way ensembles. Previously, he was a music critic at The New York Times. Also wrote for The New Republic, Slate, the London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, Fanfare and Feed. Second book, Listen to This (2010), is a collection of essays. Currently working on a book entitled Wagnerism.