Isaac Sligh is Associate Editor of The New Criterion. He served as the magazine’s eighth Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism. A graduate of the University of the South, Isaac worked as the head curator of the Ralston Listening Library and Archive in Sewanee, TN, one of the nation’s largest collections of recorded classical music and a charitably endowed venue for audiophile listening. He is currently translating a novel with his wife by the bestselling Russian author Viktor Pelevin, for which they received a 2020 RusTrans Award for Russian-to-English Translation. Isaac has lived and traveled in the Caucasus and usually writes on classical music, Renaissance poetry, and Eastern European culture.
Blog Posts by Isaac Sligh View All
Dec 16, 2022
Child’s play
On a recital by the pianist Daniil Trifonov at Carnegie Hall.
Oct 27, 2022
Out of the woods
On a performance of Mahler and Ortiz by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.
Aug 09, 2022
Going underground
On a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 in the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs.
February 01, 2021
Isaac Sligh & James Panero discuss Russia & beyond
featuring &
James Panero, the Executive Editor of The New Criterion, sits down with Isaac Sligh, the magazine’s eighth Hilton Kramer Fellow, to discuss his travels in the Russian Arctic and in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.