Timothy Mangan has been the Register’s classical music critic since 1998. He is also a contributor to Opera News and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Gramophone, among other publications. In 1999 he won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his writing on classical music. He is co-editor of Paul Bowles on Music, published by the University of California Press and widely received with neglect.

An asthmatic from a young age, Tim took up the trombone on the advice of his doctor (and his musician mother, who steered him away from the banjo) in order to build up his lung power. Finding the cure to his liking, he advanced himself on the instrument to professional heights and lucrative fame, appearing with such ensembles as the Pasadena Symphony (in rehearsal), the Pacific Symphony (as a sub) and the EPCOT Center Band (in Orlando, Fl). Tiring of the freelance life and living at home, he enrolled in the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and became a critic, graduating in the first class of a special two-year program designed to form such creatures. He also studied at the University of Southern California and the Music Academy of the West and has paid it all off.

He now resides in Mission Viejo splendor with a wife, a son, a loud bird and air-conditioning.

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