Alex Ross, a native of Washington DC, has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

 

It has been translated into seventeen languages and inspired a year-long festival at the Southbank Centre, in London. His second book, the essay collection Listen to This, received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He is now at work on Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music. Ross has received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Belmont Prize in Germany, and a MacArthur Fellowship. 

His books have won awards and acclaim from the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, National Book Critics Circle, Time, Newsweek, and more. Alex Ross is a music writer, but his insights go far beyond the sounds.  

The Guardian says:

The Rest is Noise performs the remarkable trick of making what may be considered abstruse musical matters widely accessible. It won the Guardian First Book award, and rightly so; it's the kind of book anyone can read who, as Beecham said about the English, doesn't know much about music but likes the noise it makes.

And from Amazon.com:

Alex Ross…weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Wednesday May 14

8:00 pm RMTC Warehouse Theatre Tickets $25

TICKETS for ART MATTERS: a conversation with Alex Ross Available online via PayPal or in person at the Winnipeg Arts Council office (cash and cheques only.)

ART MATTERS:

In 2014 the Winnipeg Arts Council is hosting Art Matters, a series featuring artists in conversation about the work that they do as well as the importance of art in our lives. Each event will feature a stimulating look at what makes artists tick and how they do what they do, but will also address the importance of the arts – why Art Matters. 

Hosted by Classic 107 host Bill Richardson, the events will take place at the Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse Theatre.  Tickets are available at the WAC office or on the WAC website