A conversation with Alex Ross, Author of The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Thursday, Oct 18, 7:00 p.m. Wheeler Auditorium

Presented with the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley
and moderated by Professor Cynthia Gorney
Admission is free; no tickets required

An astute listener to music of all genres, Ross challenges popular perceptions of modern music: “Why, when paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock go for a hundred million dollars or more on the art market and lines from T. S. Eliot are quoted on the yearbook pages of alienated teenagers across the land, is twentieth-century classical music still considered obscure and difficult?” asks Ross. “In fact, it’s better known than most people realize.”

Alex Ross has regaled readers of The New Yorker with his musical insights since 1996; prior to that he was a music critic at The New York Times. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. Ross is the recipient of two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a cultural history of music since 1900, will be published next month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Gorney joined the Graduate School of Journalism faculty in 1999, after a career at The Washington Post that included serving as an award-winning national features writer, South American bureau chief
and the first writer for the Post’s Style section based on the West
Coast. She is the author of Articles of Faith: A History of the
Abortion Wars,and has written for many magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper, The New York Times Magazine, and the American
Journalism Review. Gorney is a graduate of the University of
California at Berkeley.