Alex Ross to tour
Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic, has become chattering-class royalty since the publication of his award-winning book on 20th-Century classical music The Rest is Noise in 2007. If awards were given out for book titles, this would be right up there with Freakonomics.
Now he's launching a global tour; well, a three-stop American city tour anyway.
Alex will do the words while Ethan Iverson will provide the (educational) musical accompaniment. Ethan's blog is worth your click.
Although there's obviously an element of tongue-in-cheek around the hyperbole AR is proclaiming regarding his tour, his idea could genuinely evolve into a stadium world tour. All things live are booming at the moment: not just theatre and festivals, but "edutainment" in the form of book festivals and lecture tours.
During May the author and zeitgeist guru Malcolm Gladwell will be touring the UK with his one-man show. MG has the pulling power to fill a decent-sized theatre and undertake a tour with his brand of contemporary culture lectures. So, if he can do that what could AR & EI achieve?
It wouldn't be a huge surprise to see that wily impresario David Campbell, the man behind the success of London's O2, getting in on the act. The potential for an Alex Ross / Ethan Iverson global tour to empty Notting Hill, Islington and Hampstead and fill the O2 for at least a couple of nights might well be crossing his entrepreneurial mind.
An arts journal by 
Comment number 1.
At 08:09 21st Apr 2010, Framescourer wrote:The Rest Is Noise (Ross) is a meticulously researched, brilliantly written cornerstone of 21st century cultural literature. Blink (Gladwell) is a patchy, boring, charlatan's sales pitch. Given that either writer's success is based on a foundation of their work in print, one would hope that having an impressario to push Ross' 'product' would at least replicate Gladwell's following.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)