Thursday April 24 * 7pm * Free / donations * RSVP

About ten years into a routine of running every morning, the music critic Ben Ratliff realized that listening and running have something in common. Maybe a lot of things. If you like, start with the word "track." Consider that music suggests its own atmosphere, and that running is rhythmic. Remember that both practices involve moving headlong into the near future and staying aware. Keep going.

He set out to write about music in a new way--new to him, at least--in which the motion of a body through the atmospheres of his New York running routes could correspond with the motion in the music he heard through his earphones. The result, Run the Song, is a new book of interconnected essays on music, motion, criticism, the future, and the ways that cities reveal their divisions to a runner. Within each chapter, one piece of music, one run, one atmosphere.  Soul, jazz, hardcore punk, string quartets, Carnatic singing, Eliane Radigue’s slow-change electronics, Theo Parrish's long DJ sets, Sade, Fred Astaire, and Ice Spice. The lowlands of the Bronx, the steep hills of Yonkers, the paths alongside the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Gridded streets, deep woods, underpasses, shrines and burial sites, FEMA field hospitals, public and private property of all kinds.

Ratliff will talk with the Washington Post music critic Chris Richards about running and listening, and play some of the music described in the book.

“Certain writing rushes out of the mind and into the body, makes you want to slam the book shut, get up, move around. This brilliant and invigorating book will make you want to do just that: Run the Song.”—Nuar Alsadir, author of Animal Joy

Ben Ratliff is the author of Every Song Ever and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A former music critic for the New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.