We are pleased to announce internationally renowned author and music critic Alex Ross as a guest of the 2018 Festival.

Contributing to The New Yorker since 1993, Alex became the magazine’s music critic in 1996, covering the field from the Metropolitan Opera to the downtown avant-garde, and has also contributed essays on pop music, literature, twentieth-century history, and gay life. His first book, “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,” a cultural history of music since 1900, won a National Book Critics Circle award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Alex's visit is in partnership with Chamber Music New Zealand, and he will also appear in a special CMNZ performance at The Auckland Town Hall on Sunday 20 May, sharing the stage with mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew and Aotearoa’s pre-eminent modern music ensemble STROMA. Together they present a musical tasting session that winds through the ages featuring work by Ravel, Bartók, Stravinsky and, of course, the modernist master himself, Schoenberg.

Ticket details and the full 2018 programme will be announced on 14 March.