Whitney Balliett

The sad news at The New Yorker today is that Whitney Balliett, the magazine’s longtime jazz critic, died yesterday at the age of 80. Our website has posted two classic pieces: a Profile of Bobby Short and a piece on Sonny Rollins. Balliett’s Collected Works sits on my shelf next to Andrew Porter’s anthologies — the New Yorker’s main legacy in music criticism.

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise.