Carnegie Mellon University
September 30, 2014

New Yorker Music Critic Alex Ross To Speak at Carnegie Mellon on Phonographic Music

Contact: Shilo Rea / 412-268-6094 / shilo@cmu.edu

Alex RossEvent: Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker since 1996, will speak at Carnegie Mellon University on "Phonographic Music: Composers and the Early Era of Reproduction."

Ross writes about classical music, from the Metropolitan Opera to the downtown avant-garde. He also has written essays on pop music, literature, 20th century history and gay life. His first book, "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," is a cultural history of music that takes readers from pre-war Vienna and Paris, to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, to New York in the '60s and '70s through the present. It won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Guardian's First Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The book also inspired a yearlong festival at the Southbank Centre in London, which involved more than 100 concerts.

Ross' second book, "Listen to This," is a collection of essays about his late-blooming discovery of pop music. He is now at work on a third book, "Wagnerism," which will explore composer Richard Wagner's vast cultural impact.

Ross' talk at CMU is part of the university's Humanities Center's 2014-15 lecture series on "Music: Mind, Machine and Milieu."

"Alex Ross might be the perfect instance of a critic who can address music in relation to the center's theme for this year.  And, it's hard to think of another music critic today who has had equal impact or has equal range.  We are thrilled to bring him to Pittsburgh," said David Shumway, professor of English and director of the Humanities Center.

For more information, visit http://www.cmu.edu/hss/humanities-center/.

When:
7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 9.  A reception follows the talk.

Where: McConomy Auditorium, Jared L. Cohon University Center, Carnegie Mellon University

Cost:
Free and open to the public.

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Alex Ross (pictured above) writes about classical music, from the Metropolitan Opera to the downtown avant-garde. He also has written essays on pop music, literature, 20th century history and gay life.