WGBH Forum Network; Alex Ross: Listen to This

Ross, Alex · November 10, 2010

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross discusses his second book, Listen to This.Listen to This, which takes its title from a 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces are dedicated to classical and popular artists alike.In a previously unpublished essay, Ross retells hundreds of years of music history--from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin--through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Bjork and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing.Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition.