Tim Page (music critic)

American journalist (born 1954)

Tim Page (born Ellis Batten Page Jr.; 11 October 1954) is an American writer, music critic, editor, producer and professor who won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism for The Washington Post. Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic for The New York Times, has praised Page's criticism for its "extensive knowledge of cultural history, especially literature; the instincts and news sense of a sharp beat reporter; the skills of a good storyteller; infectious inquisitiveness; immunity to dogma; and an always running pomposity detector." Other notable writings by Page include his biography of the novelist Dawn Powell, which is credited for helping to spark the revival of Powell's work, and a memoir that chronicles growing up with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder.

Page was born in San Diego, California to Elizabeth Latimer Thaxton Page, a homemaker and former journalist, and Ellis Batten Page, a professor of educational psychology. During their time in San Diego, the family was acquainted with Alan M. Kriegsman, then the music critic for the San Diego Union, and his wife Sali Ann Kriegsman, who lived in Page's grandmother's house. Page credits "Mike" Kriegsman for having an early influence on his desire to write about music:

"Almost every night Mike attended a concert, wrote it up, and we could read all about it in the morning paper. I could imagine no better way to live." The Page family moved to Storrs, Connecticut; Page lived there until 1975, save a year long stint from 1969 to 1970, when the family relocated to Caracas, Venezuela during Ellis Page's sabbatical. A Day With Timmy Page screened in the 1968 New York Film Festival and as the opening selection of the first Festival of Young Filmmakers in New York. Despite that, Page was also an early champion of Midori Gotō; he first praised her playing when she was 14 years old and later profiled her when she was 21. whom Page credits as his "most significant mentor." Page dates his first mature piece of criticism to April 1976, when he was moved to write an essay about the world premiere of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians." The paper accepted, published, and paid for the article. "And suddenly," Page writes in his memoir, "I was a music critic." In 1981, he began an 11 year association with WNYC FM, where he presented an afternoon program that broadcast interviews with composers and musicians, including guests like Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Dizzy Gillespie and Meredith Monk. Page has become one of the leading writers on the work of the idiosyncratic Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Page spoke over the phone with Gould for the first time in October 1980; what was supposed to be a brief interview lasted for nearly four hours. Over the next two years, Page and Gould spoke on the phone several times a week. They met only once during a three day visit Page paid to Gould in Toronto, where the two conducted a one hour radio drama comparing Gould's two versions of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. This interview was released on the three CD set A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981 in 2002. Page edited the first collection of Gould's writings, The Glenn Gould Reader, in 1984, which has never gone out of print. Page was a music writer and culture reporter at The New York Times from 1982 to 1987; in 1987, he became the chief music critic of Newsday. He was the chief classical music critic of The Washington Post 1995–2008, and in 1997 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for what the Pulitzer board called his "lucid and illuminating music criticism;" the preceding year he had written on subjects that included the decline of classical music recordings and the position of the violin section in the orchestra. Page has also written widely on film and literature for the Post and elsewhere. In 1991, Page became fascinated by the work of the then obscure novelist Dawn Powell. Other writings have praised the musical contributions of The Magnetic Fields and The High Llamas. In 2007, the University of Southern California named Page a professor of journalism and music. Page has been a member of the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism since its founding in 2012, and in 2015, he was appointed "Visiting Scholar in Residence" at Oberlin College. In 2020, Page retired from USC and moved back to New York City. Later that year, he embarked on a six month tour of the Balkan countries. In May 2021, the Peabody Conservatory announced that Page is to be a visiting professor as of the autumn of 2021.

Page revealed in a 2007 essay for The New Yorker that seven years earlier he had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, "in the course of a protracted effort to identify — and, if possible, alleviate — my lifelong unease." The essay led to the publication of his book length memoir Parallel Play, published by Doubleday in September 2009. In a review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the book is "not about Asperger's, but it is intensified by the peculiar nature of Mr. Page's Asperger governed perceptions. Tirelessly logical, sometimes agonizingly so, he lives life in an extra dimension, with a sense of time that irrevocably links past and present, living and dead, ardent love affairs and broken ones." Page has written that he "wouldn't wish the condition on anybody — I've spent too much of my life isolated, unhappy, and conflicted — yet I am also convinced that many of the things I've done were accomplished not despite my Asperger's syndrome but because of it." Disabled at first, he took medical leave from USC for the better part of a year. Gradually he recovered, a process that he attributes to listening deeply to music that had comforted him throughout his life. He has written that despite his injury he has "enjoyed some of the best years of my life – pacing myself carefully, seeing people when I can, teaching once more and even writing a bit."