Tim Page and Anthony Tommasini, chief classical music critics for The Washington Post and The New York Times, respectively, will speak on Sunday (Oct. 14) at 7:30 p.m. in Hill Hall Auditorium at UNC.
The free public event, “The Critics Speak,” will not be a lecture but a conversation, with questions and comments from the audience welcomed. Topics discussed will include the place of music and music criticism in America today, the role of the critic in American musical life, the health of the American orchestra, the state of music education, newspaper criticism and the Internet and the classical music recording business.
Page, the winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, has written books including “Music from the Road” (Oxford University Press, 1992) and “Glenn Gould: A Life in Pictures” (Random House, 2002). In the 1980s he hosted a show on WNYC-FM in New York that featured interviews with composers and musicians including the late Aaron Copeland, Virgil Thomson and Philip Glass.
Tommasini holds a master’s degree in music from Yale University and a doctorate in musical arts from Boston University. He wrote “Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle” (W.W. Norton, 1997). A pianist, he is heard on two Northeastern Records compact discs of Thomson’s music, “Portraits and Self Portraits” and “Mostly About Love: Songs and Vocal Works.” Both were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
“The Critics Speak” is sponsored by the music department, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, all at UNC. For more information, visit https://music.unc.edu/calendars/carolinasymposia/ or call (919) 962-1039.