Alex Ross Wins MacArthur

Music critic Alex Ross ’90 has just been named a MacArthur Fellow. Ross is a regular columnist for the New Yorker and his encyclopedic first book, The Rest Is Noise, chronicles twentieth-century music from Gustav Mahler to John Cage. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism and made numerous best-of-the-year lists, including those of the New York Times and Washington Post. In awarding him the fellowship, the foundation said:

“In an era when many proclaim the imminent demise of concert halls due to waning attendance, Ross offers both highly specialized and casual readers new ways of thinking about the music of the past and its place in our future.”

Read more about Ross and his criticism in this article from the July-August 2008 issue of Harvard Magazine.