In an interview with the blog-hosting service TypePad, Alex Ross—book author, New Yorker music critic, and TypePad blogger (The Rest Is Noise)—xplains why he finds the act of blogging "irresistible": "The blog allows me to indulge in a kind of writing that I couldn't pull off anywhere else—a little bit sly, a little bit whimsical, a little bit aphoristic, a little bit poetic ..."
Another blogger whose writing displays that sort of whimsy is none other than Sidney Chen, the artistic administrator for Kronos Quartet, a former Nonesuch employee, and the creator of the blog The Standing Room (TSR). Ross says he's a regular TSR reader and finds that the site "casts a very smart and sly eye on the classical world."
Perhaps he is referring to the recent TSR entry covering a lecture-discussion in San Francisco among Ross, critic John Rockwell, and singer Linda Ronstadt, in which Ross admitted to having, in his college days, walked around campus singing the "I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung" aria from John Adams's Nixon in China. The admission was followed by a small clearing of the throat by Ross and then a moment of anticipation. "Will there be a performance?!?" TSR wonders. But it was not to be. "Alas. He drinks some water instead."
Read the interview with Alex Ross at everything.typepad.com.
Visit his blog at therestisnoise.com. Visit Sid's blog at thestandingroom.com.
