New Music reBlog

I have a habit of finishing books in hotels. I sent off The Rest Is Noise from the downtown Omni in Los Angeles; Listen To This, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish at the end of September, went forth last week from a Marriott in Park City, Utah. The new book is a panoramic tour of the musical world, touching variously on Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Verdi, Brahms, Marian Anderson, Frank Sinatra, Cecil Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Björk, Radiohead, Mitsuko Uchida, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Luther Adams, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Bob Dylan, and the Malcolm X Shabazz High School Marching Band. In the Preface, I say that the aim is to "approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world." The book includes material already published in The New Yorker as well as pieces written or heavily revised for the occasion. The first chapter, from which the title comes, appeared in the magazine in 2004. The second chapter, "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues," is new — a rapid-moving history of music told through bass lines. The third chapter, "Infernal Machines," weaves together various thoughts on music and technology. And it goes from there. At some point, this site will be redesigned in order to incorporate an audio companion for the new book; the Rest Is Noise material will, of course, remain. I hope you like it!