Timeline

MTT was born to Ted and Roberta Thomas in Los Angeles on December 21, 1944.

As a child, MTT spent long hours at the family’s piano making up his own songs.

MTT learned to improvise from Ted, a self-taught musician, before beginning formal piano lessons with Dorothy Bishop.

MTT was also passionate about science as a child.

MTT first met his future husband Joshua Robison when they were both members of the Walter Reed Junior High orchestra. MTT played oboe and piano; Joshua played cello.

MTT’s first experience conducting came at Walter Reed Junior High School in the San Fernando Valley.

While a student at the University of Southern California (USC), MTT studied piano with John Crown, and conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl. He also played the oboe.

MTT was invited to be the assistant conductor and musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival.

Upon graduating from USC, MTT was named Chief Conductor of the Ojai Festival. He became Co-Music Director in 1969 and Music Director in 1973.

MTT graduated summa cum laude from USC with a Master’s in music.

MTT was a Conducting Fellow at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, where he was awarded the prestigious Koussevitsky Prize.

MTT made his New York debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on October 22, 1969, as a mid-concert replacement for William Steinberg.

MTT was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

MTT received the first of his 39 GRAMMY nominations for the Ives/Ruggles recording made with the BSO. Explore MTT’s full discography.

MTT was featured in a New York Times Magazine profile.

MTT succeeded Leonard Bernstein as host of the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, which aired on CBS. He would host the show through 1977.

MTT began as Music Director for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a post he would hold until 1979.

In 1973, a performance of Steve Reich’s Four Organs at Carnegie Hall led by MTT nearly caused a riot, with some audience members yelling for the music to stop. He also performed with Reich on a recording of the piece for Angel/EMI.

MTT joined Leonard Bernstein to lead the American Symphony Orchestra in an Ives Centenary concert at the Danbury State Fairgrounds.

Jazz legend Sarah Vaughan joined MTT and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl for an all-Gershwin program. A few years later, in 1982, the album Gershwin Live!, recorded by Vaughan, MTT and the LA Phil, would win Vaughan her only GRAMMY Award.

MTT wins the first of his 12 Grammys for a recording of Orff’s Carmina Burana with The Cleveland Orchestra.

MTT created and starred in an episode of the PBS series Camera Three called “Carl Ruggles: American Mystic.”

Recording projects were a focal point of MTT’s creative life in the early 1980s, including a Beethoven series with the English Chamber Orchestra for CBS MasterWorks.

New York City was MTT’s home base in the early 1980s, although he worked extensively with orchestras in Europe during this time.

MTT conducted the American premiere of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.

MTT was profiled by Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning.

MTT partnered with Ted & Lin Arison to open a training orchestra for young American musicians in Miami Beach, Florida: the New World Symphony.

MTT became Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he would hold until 1995.

The New World Symphony launched its inaugural season with MTT as Artistic Director. The NWS team renovated and moved into the Lincoln Theatre in 1989, working and performing at venues across Miami in the meantime.

Written for Audrey Hepburn, MTT’s composition From the Diary of Anne Frank was premiered by the New World Symphony. It was the first of his symphony compositions to be performed publicly.

MTT and the New World Symphony collaborated with Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine for a performance called “In Harmony,” which was broadcast on Univision.

A series of conversations between MTT and Edward Seckerson was published in the book Viva Voce.

In August 1995, MTT led the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in the premiere of his composition Shówa/Shoáh, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The piece was inspired by the sound of Heiwa No Kane, the bell which is rung at Hiroshima’s annual ceremony commemorating the most tragic event of the Shówa Era.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, a position he would hold for 25 years.

MTT’s first Opening Night Gala with the San Francisco Symphony features the world premiere of Lou Harrison’s A Parade for MTT, plus the music of John Cage, John Adams, and Charles Ives. Every subscription program during that first season would include an American work.

MTT and the San Francisco Symphony win their first GRAMMY together – Best Orchestral Recording of the Year for Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet.

MTT and the San Francisco Symphony opened Carnegie Hall’s 108th season with a centennial tribute to George Gershwin, featuring Audra McDonald in her Carnegie Hall debut. The concert was broadcast on PBS’s Great Performance.

In June 1999, MTT and the San Francisco Symphony presented a widely praised Stravinsky Festival that was uniquely framed by his personal connection with the composer. That same year, the orchestra and MTT won the GRAMMY for Best Orchestral Performance for an all-Stravinsky album.

By the end of the 1990s, MTT and the San Francisco Symphony had established themselves as a lasting partnership.

MTT rang in the new millennium with the San Francisco Symphony and guest star Audra McDonald, who performed MTT’s song “Sentimental Again.”

The San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks Festival celebrates the nation’s visionaries, pioneers, and iconoclasts. Among the mavericks whose music is explored are Charles Ives, George Antheil, Lou Harrison, Aaron Copland, Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, John Adams, Steven Mackey, Duke Ellington, and Henry Cowell.

MTT and the San Francisco Symphony launched its own record label and digital production company, SFS Media. Its first recording was Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, recorded just days after 9/11. It was the first in a complete Mahler cycle and won the GRAMMY for Best Orchestral Performance.

During a mini-American Mavericks Festival in December 2001, MTT led the San Francisco Symphony in the world premiere of Henry Brant’s Ice Field with the octogenarian composer at the organ. Brant’s work would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

MTT wrote his Poems of Emily Dickinson for Renée Fleming, who premiered them with the San Francisco Symphony on February 27, 2002.

A starry line-up of singers joined MTT for the San Francisco Symphony Gala celebrating his 60th birthday.

Together with SFS Media, MTT produced and hosted the PBS documentary series “Keeping Score” dedicated to the music and lives of nine composers. The first episode followed members of the San Francisco Symphony as they prepared for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

MTT creates his stage show The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater as part of his first Carnegie Hall Perspectives Series. The show tells story of his grandparents, the Yiddish Theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky. It was then performed by the San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New World Symphony, who recorded the performance for broadcast on PBS.

MTT was profiled by 60 Minutes. 

After the success of the pilot episode, Keeping Score releases its first season of episodes including portraits of Beethoven, Stravinsky and Copland.

MTT and SFS Media received a Peabody Award for “The MTT Files,” a radio series for American Public Radio. One of the episodes included an interview with James Brown.

MTT began work with Frank Gehry, who had once been MTT’s babysitter back in LA, to design a state-of-the-art new home for the New World Symphony.

MTT was awarded the National Medal of Arts at the White House by President Barack Obama.

MTT partnered with YouTube to create the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, a pioneering endeavor that invited young musicians from around the world to audition through YouTube for an invitation to a week of workshops in New York City, culminating in a livestreamed performance from Carnegie Hall that reached millions of viewers around the world. A second event took place in Sydney in 2011.

Season 2 of Keeping Score airs on PBS featuring portraits of Berlioz, Ives and Shostakovich.

The New World Center, a state-of-the-art facility for education and performance designed by Frank Gehry opens. One of its major innovations is a 7,000-square-foot projection wall that allows listeners throughout the season to enjoy WALLCAST® concerts outside for free.

In his TED Talk title “Music and emotion through time,” MTT traces the development of classical music through the development of written notation, the record, and the re-mix.

To celebrate both the San Francisco Symphony and John Cage’s centennial years, MTT revived the American Mavericks Festival. As part of it, he joined Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan LaBarbara on stage for Cage’s Song Books.

In Miami, MTT and the New World Symphony celebrated the Cage centenary with “Making the Right Choices: A John Cage Celebration” featuring 12 of his works performed on stage.
Watch the performances.

MTT led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, and a cast that included Alexandra Silber (Maria) and Cheyenne Jackson (Tony) in the first-ever concert performances of Leonard Bernstein’s complete score for the beloved musical West Side Story.

Partners for 38 years, MTT and Joshua Robison get married in San Francisco.

In December 2014, MTT and the San Francisco Symphony launched the popular SoundBox, an intimate, atmospheric new series in a flexible cabaret-style venueenhanced by theatrical lighting and integrated video design.

In January, the San Francisco Symphony celebrates MTT’s 70th birthday with a concert centered around a performance of Liszt’s Hexameron for six pianos and featuring lots surprise guests. In March, the celebrations continue in London when the London Symphony Orchestra performs a 70th birthday concert at Buckingham Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth II.

MTT wrote “You Come Here Often?” from Upon Further Reflection for the pianist Yuja Wang. She included it on her GRAMMY-winning 2022 recordingThe American Project with the Louisville Orchestra and conductor Teddy Abrams.

MTT’s Carl Sandburg-inspired piece Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind — scored for female voices, chamber orchestra and bar band — was premiered by the New World Symphony.

The San Francisco Symphony canceled two concerts in North Carolina in protest of new anti-LGBTQ laws, replacing them with a special event in San Francisco: Symphony Pride.  MTT was joined by Broadway star Audra McDonald for a wide-ranging program featuring works by LGBTQ composers.

MTT was named a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree alongside Linda Ronstadt, Sally Field, Earth, Wind & Fire, and the Sesame Workshop.

The biographical documentary Where NOW Is, directed by Susan Froemke and Kirk Simon, ran at film festivals across the country before airing on PBS’s American Masters.

MTT leads the San Francisco Symphony in the world premiere of his compositions Meditations on Rilke, featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Ryan McKinny. The SFS Media recording of the performance will win the GRAMMY for Best Classical Compendium.

MTT stepped down as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2020. Because of the pandemic, his departure was celebrated by a star-studded online tribute to his 25-year tenure with the orchestra. Visit the website.

On Friday, May 20, 2022, Michael Tilson Thomas gave the commencement address at The Juilliard School’s Commencement Ceremony. In addition to speaking, he was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate and led a student ensemble in Ingolf Dahl’s Intermezzo and Fugue from Music for Brass Instruments.

MTT celebrated the 50th anniversary of his relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra with Mahler 5.

Pentatone released a four-disc special collection of MTT’s compositions.