Listen To This

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...