Tim Page
Spoleto overview critic Tim Page was cited as one of the most influential people in the world of U.S. opera by Opera News in 2006, not only for his writings but for his support of other critics. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism as the chief music critic for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2008. As part of his job with the Post, he was responsible for all aspects of classical music coverage.
Recent Stories
Banks mailing more rewards credit card offers
TheThe catch is that the cards being offered are now more likely to have annual fees.
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Another fine festival takes a bow
The party's over. After tonight, the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, which hadn't even held its first rehearsal a month ago, will cease to exist except in the memories of those who were there to play or listen during its few weeks of glory in Charleston.
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'Modern' music escapes definition
Throughout much of the 1980s, I was the host of a radio program on New York's WNYC-FM that played a lot of contemporary music. One afternoon, however, I devoted an hour to works by the 12th-century composer Perotin - spare, ethereal yet startlingly intense vocal compositions based on the sound (fairly rare in Western music) of stark parallel fourths.
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Mature Chang lets self-expression emerge
Sarah Chang has come a long way from her beginnings as a brilliantly virtuosic child prodigy who dazzled audiences with the speed, strength and sonority of her early performances in the mid-1990s. I was all but alone among critics in finding those long-ago concerts empty and meaningless studies in aggression, endowed with neither warmth nor charm.
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Time to tell it like it was
Mayor Joe Riley offered a moving tribute to pianist and Spoleto Festival USA artistic director for chamber music Charles Wadsworth the other night.
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Wadsworth receives fond farewell
After a day when it seemed that the world had gone crazy - missile tests in North Korea, unusually heated partisan rhetoric on the morning talk shows, terrorism in a Wichita church - it was restorative to enter Memminger Auditorium on Sunday night. There, friends embraced friends, we listened to some wonderful music, and - not so incidentally - we toasted the long career of Charles Wadsworth.
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New styles of music genuinely artistic
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet - which, despite the bucolic name, is based in New York City rather than the northern Midwest - offered some of the most musically responsive, physically demanding and intellectually satisfying dancing I've seen Saturday afternoon at Galliard Municipal Auditorium.
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Highs, lows of Spoleto's first 9 days
Halftime!
We are in the middle of the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA, and I thought it might be a good time to take stock. As Henry James observed on the first page of "Portrait of a Lady," part of the afternoon has waned but much of it is left, and what is left is "of the finest and rarest quality."
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Orchestra sparkles in 'Das Lied'
What an extraordinary experience it must be for a young person to have practiced and perfected the playing of a beloved instrument, to have won hometown (or even home state) recognition as an accomplished soloist, and then to come to Charleston and team up with other brilliant young musicians as part of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.
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Piccolo has a power, pull of its own
Charleston is twice-blessed at this time of year. The Spoleto Festival USA may present most of the "big-ticket" items, but the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, produced and directed by the city of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs, is equally capable of startling and capturing a visitor.
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