Tim Page is a writer, editor, music critic, producer and professor. He is a
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning music critic for the
Washington Post and also played an essential role in the revival of American author
Dawn PowellDawn Powell was an American writer of novels and stories.-Biography:Powell was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, a village 45 miles north of Columbus and the county seat of Morrow County. Powell regularly gave her birth year as 1897 but primary documents support the earlier date...
.
Career
Page grew up in
Storrs, ConnecticutStorrs is a census-designated place and part of the town of Mansfield, Connecticut located in eastern Tolland County. The population was 10,996 at the 2000 census...
, where his father, Ellis B. Page, was a professor of education at the
University of ConnecticutThe admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...
. In 1967, Page was the subject of a short documentary,
A Day With Timmy Page, that chronicled his early interest in filmmaking and was widely shown. During this time, he studied piano and composition, and founded a rock band, "Dover Beach." He attended E. O.Smith High School, also in Storrs.
Page moved to
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1975, attended the Mannes College The New School for Music for one year, and then transferred and graduated from
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1979. By the time of his graduation, Page was already writing for the arts magazine
Soho News and other publications and hosting a contemporary music program on the Columbia radio station,
WKCRWKCR-FM is a radio station. Licensed to New York, New York, USA, it serves the New York area. The station is currently owned by Trustees of Columbia University in New York.-History:...
.
In 1981, he began an 11-year association with
WNYC-FMWNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...
, where he presented an afternoon program that broadcast interviews with hundreds of composers and musicians, including
Aaron CoplandAaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
,
Virgil ThomsonVirgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
,
Philip GlassPhilip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
and
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
. An interview with
Glenn GouldGlenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...
, comparing the pianist's
two versionsBach: The Goldberg Variations is the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould. An interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations , the work launched Gould's career as a renowned international pianist, and became one of the most well-known piano recordings...
of
BachBạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
's
Goldberg VariationsThe Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form...
, was released as part of a three-CD set entitled
A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981 in 2002 that became a surprise best-seller.
In 1982, Page joined
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, where he was a music writer and culture reporter until 1987. He became chief music critic of
NewsdayNewsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
in 1987 and then chief classical music critic of
The Washington Post in 1995. In 1997, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for what the Pulitzer board called his "lucid and illuminating" music criticism. He has also written widely on film and literature for the Post and elsewhere.
Page became interested in the life and work of American author
Dawn PowellDawn Powell was an American writer of novels and stories.-Biography:Powell was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, a village 45 miles north of Columbus and the county seat of Morrow County. Powell regularly gave her birth year as 1897 but primary documents support the earlier date...
in 1991 and set to work interviewing her surviving friends and family. With the help of Powell's cousin John F. Sherman, he launched a challenge to the author's executrix, which led directly to the discovery of Powell's papers and the subsequent reissue of most of her books. To date, Page has edited Powell's diaries, letters, plays and short-stories, as well as written introductions to a half dozen of her novels. His biography of the author,
Dawn Powell: A Biography, was published in 1998. He later edited and annotated the
Library of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
's two-volume collection of Powell's work in, published in 2001.
In 1993, Page conceived and then served as the first executive producer for BMG Catalyst, a short-lived record label devoted to new and unusual music. Projects included
Spiked, an album of music by
Spike JonesMel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...
with liner notes by
Thomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
;
Memento Bittersweet, an album of music by Chris DeBlasio, Kevin Oldham, Lee Gannon and other HIV-positive composers;
Night of the Mayas, the first CD devoted entirely to orchestral works by
Silvestre RevueltasSilvestre Revueltas Sánchez was a Mexican composer of classical music, a violinist and a conductor.-Life:...
, Mexico's leading composer; two solo recital discs by violinist Maria Bachmann and several others.
In 2006, Page was chosen as one of the 25 most influential people in the world of opera by the magazine
Opera News, not only for his writings but for his early championing of critics such as
Anthony Tommasini-Early years:Tommasini was born in Brooklyn around 1948 and raised on Long Island. He was admitted to Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music, but chose to matriculate at Yale University in order to obtain a broader liberal arts education...
,
Justin DavidsonJustin Davidson is a classical music and architecture critic. He began his journalism career as a local stringer for the Associated Press in Rome before moving to the United States to study music at Harvard...
and Philip Kennicott. He has also helped launch revivals of the writings of
Sigrid UndsetSigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.-Biography:Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism and became a lay Dominican...
and Robert Green Ingersoll and he wrote one of the first mainstream media appreciations of the late singer-songwriter
Judee SillJudee Sill was an American singer and songwriter. The first artist signed to David Geffen's Asylum label, she released two albums, then worked briefly as a cartoonist before dying of drug abuse in 1979.Her eponymous debut album was released in late 1971 and was followed around eighteen months...
, whose two records from the early 1970s have been reissued and whom Page considers "an artist of extraordinary gifts."
Page has also produced concerts at venues ranging from
Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
to New York's once-infamous
Mudd ClubThe Mudd Club was a TriBeCa nightclub that was opened in October 1978 by Steve Mass, art curator Diego Cortez and Anya Phillips, a figure in the downtown punk scene...
. From 1999 to 2001, he was the artistic advisor and creative chair for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Since leaving the
Post, Page has been named a professor of journalism and music at the
University of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. He currently lives in South Los Angeles, California.
In 2009, he published
Parallel Play, a memoir expanded from a 2007 article in
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
about growing up with
Asperger syndromeAsperger's syndrome that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development...
.
Asperger syndrome
In August 2007 Page revealed in
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, "in the course of a protracted effort to identify — and, if possible, alleviate — my lifelong unease". His book-length memoir of his experience with the condition,
Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger's, was published by Doubleday in September 2009.
Books (selected list)
- The Glenn Gould Reader. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). Editor.
- Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson , with Vanessa Weeks Page. (Summit Books, 1988). Editor.
- William Kapell: An Illustrated Life History of the American Pianist (International Piano Archives at Maryland, 1992). Author.
- Music From The Road: Views and Reviews 1978 - 1992, anthology of previously published work. (Oxford University Press, 1992).
- Dawn Powell At Her Best (Steerforth Press, 1994). Editor.
- The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 (Steerforth Press, 1995). Discovered, edited and annotated Powell's diaries.
- Dawn Powell: A Biography (Henry Holt, 1998). Author.
- Selected Letters of Dawn Powell (Henry Holt, 1999). Editor.
- Dawn Powell: Novels 1930-1942 and Dawn Powell: Novels 1944-1962. (Library of America, 2001). Editor.
- The Unknown Sigrid Undset (Steerforth, 2001). Editor.
- Glenn Gould: A Life In Pictures (Random House, 2002). Author.
- Tim Page on Music (Amadeus Press, 2002). Collection of previously published work.
- “What’s God Got To Do With It?”: Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk and the Separation of Church and State (Steerforth Press, 2005). Editor.
- Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger's (Doubleday, 2009)
- Parallel Play (Doubleday 2010), reissue of book without subtitle and some changes to text
External links