PROGRAM

SCHOENBERG: Op. 11 no. 3 (1909)
BARTOK: "Allegro Barbaro" (1911)
JELLY ROLL MORTON: "New Orleans Blues" (c. 1910)
IVES: "The Alcotts" from Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860" (1916-19, revised later) STRAVINSKY: "Hymne" from Serenade in A (1925)
GERSHWIN: No. 1 of Three Preludes (1926)
WEBERN: No. 1 of Variations op. 27 (1936)
CHARLIE PARKER: "Moose the Mooche" (recorded 1946)
SIBELIUS: "Largo" from Sonatina No. 1 (1912)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Prelude no. 4 from Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 (1950-51)
BABBITT: "Semi-Simple Variations" (1956)
LIGETI: "Fém" (1988)

Read Ethan Iverson's notes on these works on his blog.
Alex Ross provides an audio guide to The Rest is Noise on his blog.

ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE

Recreating a show they developed for a sold-out performance at the Paris Bar in New York, Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, and Ethan Iverson, pianist of the jazz trio The Bad Plus, join forces to present a unique exploration of 20th-Century music. Ross reads vivid portraits of the iconic contemporary composers from his best-selling book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. After each selection, Iverson performs a piano interlude related to the reading, presenting a dynamic cultural and musical tour.

Links/Downloads

artist biography

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and became a national bestseller. It won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Creative Communication Award; appeared on the New York Times's list of the ten best books of 2007; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the Samuel Johnson prizes. Ross has received a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. In 2008 he served as a McGraw Professor in Writing at Princeton University, and in 2009 he received an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. A native of Washington, DC, he now lives in Manhattan. In 2005 he married the actor and filmmaker Jonathan Lisecki.

Ethan Iverson, born February 11, 1973 in Menomonie, Wisconsin, is a pianist and composer best known for his work in the post-modern piano trio, The Bad Plus, with bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King. Prior to the forming of TBP, he was the musical director for the Mark Morris Dance Group and a student of both Fred Hersch and Sophia Rosoff. He has worked with artists such as Dave Douglas, Bill McHenry, Dewey Redman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Billy Hart, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Padmore, Paul Motian and Charlie Haden.