Michael Tilson Thomas, Celebrated American Conductor, Dies at 81
By Anthony Tommasini
The New York Times
A galvanizing force in classical music as a conductor, composer, pianist and evangelist, he spent 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
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Michael Tilson Thomas, Renowned Conductor, Dies at 81
By Mike Barnes
The Hollywood Reporter
A protege of Leonard Bernstein, he guided the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years and led the London Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic as well.
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Michael Tilson Thomas 1944-2026
By Lawrence Budman
Chicago Classical Review
Tilson Thomas has left an impressive legacy on the global musical horizon through his many recordings, public television programs and concerts across continents and time zones. For South Florida, the gift of the New World Symphony and its path-breaking, world-class hall and campus have changed the area’s cultural life. Michael Tilson Thomas was one of America’s truly great artists.
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Michael Tilson Thomas, renowned conductor and composer, dies at 81
By Lisa Hirsch
NPR
Thomas, known throughout the classical world and beyond as MTT, was a man of vision, curiosity and enormous musical talent. He was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, 1944, into a theatrical family. His father was a stage manager turned movie and TV producer, while his paternal grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were Yiddish theater stars. Thomas, an only child, started piano studies early and took up the oboe as well. His plans for a professional career as a pianist were ended by an injury. His oboe practice led him to a junior high orchestra, where, at the age of 12, he met 11-year-old cellist Joshua Robison, who became his friend and, years later, his life partner.
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Conducting Great Michael Tilson Thomas Passes Away
By Janos Gereben
San Francisco Classical Voice
Among the distinguished music directors in the 114-year history of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas occupied a special place. Few conductors in recent history had matched his 25-year tenure with a major orchestra or put their distinctive stamp on an organization the way he did.
…
As an artistic visionary, a dedicated collaborator and musical genius, San Francisco Symphony’s most influential leader, and a friend to many, MTT’s legacy will be long and treasured.
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Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas, a Vital American Conductor
By David Mermelstein
The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Thomas was many things throughout his protean life: Wunderkind, bad-boy, fierce advocate of American music of all stripes, informed and incisive Mahlerian and, ultimately, mentor to several generations of young musicians through the New World Symphony he co-founded in 1987 with the businessman Ted Arison and his wife, Lin, in Miami Beach, Fla.
He spread his gifts widely, contributing substantially to the music scenes not just in Miami Beach and San Francisco, but also in his hometown of Los Angeles—as well as in Boston; Buffalo, N.Y.; and London. He first made his name in L.A. as a gifted pianist and as the star student of the composer Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California. There, he became personally and professionally acquainted with the aged Igor Stravinsky, whose music proved foundational to Mr. Thomas’s career. (In time, the works of Debussy, Mahler and the Americans Gershwin, Copland, Ives and John Adams, among others, would also emerge as bedrocks of his repertory.)
I was lucky enough to hear Mr. Thomas’s last public performance of a Stravinsky score, in March 2024, when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a captivating, highly personal account of “Petrushka,” replete with indulgent accents highlighting the virtuosity of various players, a characteristically egoless act. Even more significant, though, was the realization that on the podium that day stood the last musician to have had a real working relationship with one of the 20th century’s defining composers.
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Michael Tilson Thomas, renowned conductor and composer, dies at 81
By Ronald Blum
Associated Press
Michael Tilson Thomas, a leading American conductor for a half-century who headed orchestras in Buffalo, Miami, London and San Francisco while also composing, died Wednesday. He was 81. Tilson Thomas had surgery for a brain tumor in 2021 and resumed his career, then said in February 2025 the tumor had returned. He conducted his final concert with the San Francisco Symphony in April 2025 and died at his home in San Francisco, spokesperson Connie Shuman said. Tilson Thomas received 39 Grammy Award nominations, winning 12, and was among the Kennedy Center Honors recipients in 2019.
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Visionary music conductor Michael Tilson Thomas dead at 81
By Steve Gorman and Jeffrey Dastin
Reuters
His long association with San Francisco did much to cement its place as a redoubt of the orchestral music scene.
“Michael Tilson Thomas was a visionary leader in San Francisco’s music and arts community and helped shape our entire city’s cultural identity,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a statement, saluting him also as one of the world’s first openly gay conductors.
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Michael Tilson Thomas obituary: legendary conductor and composer
The Times
Michael Tilson Thomas was in a restaurant with Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland when Bernstein turned to him and said: “You may know all this erudite stuff, but I bet you don’t know Gilbert and Sullivan.” Tilson Thomas did know the Victorian duo’s work, “frontwards and backwards”, and the pair launched into a medley of G&S patter songs, getting ever louder. Copland begged them, “Guys, shh, people are looking as us”, but rather than drop the volume they segued into Stravinsky’s ballet Les Noces, “using the cutlery and the glasses and whatever was available on the table, again getting louder and louder until Aaron just left the table,” Tilson Thomas told PBS with a laugh.
Whether in a restaurant, concert hall or recording studio, Tilson Thomas produced music bursting with fizz, wit and vitality. He had a remarkable ability to galvanise orchestral musicians and was alive to their expressiveness and musical colour, especially in the Romantic repertoire. While principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, from 1988 to 1995, he was known as Tinsel Thomas, a homage to his Hollywood antecedents, though that did little justice to his finesse, intellect or preparation. On the rare occasions that he was not conducting, he could be found skulking around the hall, observing the audience as they arrived, settled in their seats and absorbed the music.
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Michael Tilson Thomas, New World Symphony founder and conductor, dies at 81
By Amanda Rosa
Miami Herald
Michael Tilson Thomas lived a “beautiful dream” promoting the arts and classical music in Miami. Now, he rests. The renowned American conductor, composer, visionary and co-founder of Miami Beach’s prestigious New World Symphony, died Wednesday. He was 81.
Michael Tilson Thomas lived a “beautiful dream” promoting the arts and classical music in Miami. Now, he rests. The renowned American conductor, composer, visionary and co-founder of Miami Beach’s prestigious New World Symphony, died Wednesday. He was 81.
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Beloved Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas Dead at 81
By Flor Franceschetti
Miami New Times
The Miami music community is mourning the death of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, co-founder and former Artistic Director of Miami Beach’s New World Symphony. He died Wednesday, April 22, at his home in San Francisco, surrounded by family and friends. He was 81.
The cause of death was glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, according to a statement from his publicist, Constance Shuman.
A towering figure in classical music, Tilson Thomas was widely celebrated as a conductor, pianist, composer, and educator. Beyond his acclaimed 25-year tenure as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, his impact on South Florida was cemented through the creation of the New World Symphony in 1987 alongside philanthropist Ted Arison. The institution gave its first public concert in Miami in 1988 and went on to become one of the nation’s leading orchestral academies, helping train generations of young musicians.
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Remembering Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (1944-2026)
By Laura Niles
Violinist.com
Tributes are pouring in for conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, 81, who passed away on Wednesday after a five-year battle with an aggressive and incurable brain cancer, and two months after the death of his husband – a life partner of 50 years, Joshua Robison.
Thomas, known in classical circles as MTT, stood atop a lifetime of achievement: as an octogenarian he held titles as Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony; Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra; Co-Founder, Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony; and Distinguished Professor of Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During his life conducted nearly all the major orchestras of Europe and the United States, and throughout his career he won 12 Grammy Awards.
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Obituary: Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and composer
By Patrick Kidd
The Observer
Michael Tilson Thomas’s parents wanted him to be a scientist. He went to the University of Southern California to study mineralogy and crystallography but his heart belonged to Mahler and Copeland. “I have to make music,” he told them before transferring to study under the baton of Ingolf Dahl. He promised that if he had not accomplished anything by the time he was 20, he’d return to the lab.
His parents’ caution was understandable. They worked in Hollywood and his grandparents had been actors. They warned of the insecurity of the entertainment industry but Thomas, a talented pianist, felt its pull. “Why did I go over to music?” he said in 1971, a 26-year-old working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. “You could say it was because of genetic influences, or that something within me told me that’s what I should do.”
The scientific instinct remained. That same year, his mentor Leonard Bernstein, whose flamboyance Thomas shared, told the New York Times he was a genius. “He reminds me of me at that age, except that he knows more than I did,” he said. “Not only music but things like the functions of the brain, cerebrology, physics, biochemistry.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas, 1944-2026
By Mark DeVoto
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
I first met Mike Thomas, as we all called him then, in summer 1968 at Tanglewood, where I was a Fromm fellow, and when everybody was talking about how a kid of 24 could get away so successfully conducting Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, op. 16. During Fromm Week he conducted the premiere of one of my own works, and the very next night bowled over a large audience with a whimsical opera, Elephant Steps by Stanley Silverman, which attracted a lot of attention; within a year he had been hired as an assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony, quickly substituting on short notice for an ailing William Steinberg in an occasion that was readily compared to Bernstein’s last-minute stand-in for Bruno Walter in 1943. I can remember some of the special concerts, called Spectrum, that Michael arranged in Symphony Hall, where a full house was astounded by brilliant performances of The Rite of Spring and Les noces, and even a special curiosity, Stravinsky’s little-known Zvyezdoliki (second performance ever in Symphony Hall; this was later recorded for DGG), and the rarely-heard Scythian Suite of Prokofiev.
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Remembering: Michael Tilson Thomas
By Vivien Schweitzer
Symphony Magazine
After the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas—the charismatic music director of the San Francisco Symphony between 1995 and 2020—died at age 81 on April 22 of an aggressive brain cancer, former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Bay Area native and friend of Tilson Thomas from her years as a California prosecutor and senator, posted on social media that he “approached his work with creativity, innovation, and passion. He loved music, and he loved the impact music made on his audience and the world.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas and the Loss of a Cultural Bridge
By Samuel J. Abrams
AEI Blog
“Thomas was not simply a conductor. He was a cultural interpreter. His 25 years with the San Francisco Symphony were widely celebrated, but what stayed with me was his insistence on treating music not as performance but as inheritance: something to be explored, explained, and passed on.”
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“Some Other Time” with MTT: A Cellist’s Personal Reflection
By Barbara Bogatin
San Francisco Classical Voice
My first conversation with Michael Tilson Thomas was in a backstage corridor weeks after he arrived as the new music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995. I’d been hired the previous year by maestro Herbert Blomstedt, a venerable old-school conductor who kept a formal distance.
I tentatively approached Michael to introduce myself, not sure if he had noticed me sitting in the back of the cello section. With an outstretched hand and a huge smile, he beamed, “Hey Barb, how ya doin’?” — I knew this was the start of a new era.
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Michael Tilson Thomas Remembered
By Clive Gillinson
CarnegieHall.org
I first met and worked with Michael shortly after I joined the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) as a player in 1970. I was just out of music college, and he was a brilliant young whiz kid—Leonard Bernstein’s protégé and star pupil—who was making his debut as a conductor with the LSO. We were dazzled. He had a great conducting technique, endless energy, tremendous curiosity, bags of charisma, and was highly articulate. He was also quite flamboyant, which audiences loved—orchestras on occasions less so, although it was ultimately very rare for him not to capture his fellow musicians with the ebullient, idealistic characteristics that made up “MTT.”
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Celebrating the Life of Michael Tilson Thomas
By Terez Rose
The Imaginative Conservative
So join me, dear reader, in celebrating the life of Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on April 22, 2026, at the age of 81, following a five-year battle with cancer. He was world-famous and world-beloved, and articles are sure to come in the dozens, if not hundreds. I’m going to keep my own little tribute here short, casual, offer my little-glass-of-gin toast (actually, let’s go with prosecco — it has the proper mix of gravitas and celebration-of-life) to the amazing person and classical-music figure he was, and share links to other articles down below.
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A master musician: Michael Tilson Thomas’s compositional legacy
By Liran Gurkiewicz
The Jerusalem Post
While much of his oeuvre was deeply indebted to his American identity, several works explicitly engaged with his Jewish heritage.
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Michael Tilson Thomas Showed Us How to Love
By Gabe Melin
KQED
The last time I saw Michael Tilson Thomas, it wasn’t on stage at Davies Symphony Hall. It was at the Roxie Theater, at a screening of the 1932 film Merrily We Go To Hell, in July of last year. He and his husband, Joshua Robison, stood smiling in the lobby after the film, out in the city they loved. I couldn’t help but give him a nod and a “Good to see you.” It was always good to see him. When Thomas was around, you knew something exciting was likely to happen.
After one of the world’s most remarkable careers in classical music, Thomas died Wednesday at age 81, at his home. The phrase “surrounded by loved ones” usually means family around a bedside. I like to imagine the entire population of San Francisco surrounding him.
Because, my goodness, he showed us how to love music, which is to say how to love the world, and each other.
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When Michael Tilson Thomas faced down a helicopter at the Hollywood Bowl
By Jessica Gelt
Los Angeles Times
A Times story from 1985 reported Tilson Thomas walking off the stage at the Hollywood Bowl nearly 15 minutes into the hourlong second movement of Part II of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Tilson Thomas did this, according to the archived news clip, because a noisy police helicopter simply would not go away.
A reader wrote in after the obituary went live to say that he had been there when it happened, and offered up this fresh insight:
“I was at the concert. The helicopter was hovering long, low and loud(!) with a bright searchlight scanning the trees behind the shell. It was an impossible situation which [Tilson Thomas] handled with quiet dignity. And when he returned to the stage he opted to re-start the Second Movement of Mahler VIII from the top! It was a long and memorable night at the Bowl.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas on his love of music
Morely Safer / 60 Minutes
From 1984: Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas
Eugenia Zukerman / CBS Sunday Mornings
SF Symphony legend Michael Tilson Thomas dies: ‘Like some great library being burned’
By Emily Shugerman
San Francisco Standard
The famed conductor and beloved San Francisco icon Michael Tilson Thomas took his final bow Wednesday, succumbing to a rare form of brain cancer in his home, The New York Times reported.
Thomas, 81, served as music director for the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years, elevating it to one of the most highly respected symphonies in the U.S. and leaving an indelible mark on the city’s musicians and classical music fans.
Friends and followers had been anticipating his death since he was diagnosed in 2021 with glioblastoma. Watching his decline, said longtime friend Orville Schell, “was like some great library being burned — all this music within him would be gone.”
But his death was also a moment for celebration of a man who pushed the city and its arts and culture to new heights and paved the way for a generation of young music lovers.
“Michael and [husband Joshua Mark Robison] together changed the way we see classical music in San Francisco, as they wove themselves and their passions into the fabric of our city,” said former SF Symphony President Sakurako Fisher. “They are the model for our future.”
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Gavin Newsom, S.F. Giants share tributes to Michael Tilson Thomas
By Zara Irshad
San Francisco Chronicle
At Oracle Park, the San Francisco Giants honored Thomas ahead of their day game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, holding a stadium-wide moment of silence for the conductor.
“A protege of Leonard Bernstein, Thomas’ legendary career included stints with some of the world’s most renowned ensembles, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and the London Symphony Orchestra,” Carolyn McArdle, the Giants’ public address announcer, told the San Francisco crowd. “Under his brilliant leadership, the San Francisco Symphony quickly established its reputation as a world class orchestra.”
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A tribute to Michael Tilson Thomas, who has died at the age of 81
By Joshua Kosman
Gramophone
Of the many hundreds of exhilarating and memorable performances I’ve heard Michael Tilson Thomas deliver over the decades, nearly all have achieved their effect through the conductor’s sheer musicality. There have been standard classics of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, world premieres by established or up-and-coming living composers, and rarities from the operatic back catalogue of Russia, all performed with the flair and vitality that have made him one of the most significant conductors of our day.
Then there was a funny little anecdote, delivered with an offhand virtuosity for an audience of one. Sometime in the 2000s, I sat down for an interview in the large, handsomely appointed San Francisco Victorian house that Tilson Thomas, universally known as MTT, shares with his husband and business partner, Joshua Robison. We had an array of serious business to discuss that afternoon, but first, MTT launched into a story he’d heard from Takemitsu. It concerned the Japanese composer’s visit to Messiaen’s deathbed, during which he’d incurred the wrath of Mme Messiaen by praising one of the master’s works in terms she found impertinent. Telling the story called for MTT to impersonate Takemitsu impersonating both Messaiens in turn, and it was hilarious. It also defied replication. You had to be there.
Like some small, beautiful curio on a knick-knack shelf, this episode in all its triviality encapsulates something of the singularity that is MTT. The humour, the poignancy, the unexpected turns and the effortless showmanship on display all point towards the qualities of his work on a larger and more consequential canvas.
Above all, though, it’s the fleeting and protean quality of the event that corresponds, perhaps paradoxically, to MTT’s deepest artistic commitments. It matches his conviction that a musical experience is something to be grasped in the moment and savoured before it’s gone, with the understanding that the next iteration will be something related but entirely different.
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In Memoriam: Michael Tilson Thomas
PBS
GREAT PERFORMANCES mourns the passing of Michael Tilson Thomas, one of America’s preeminent conductors for over 50 years. Tilson Thomas’s many memorable appearances on GREAT PERFORMANCES include “Carnegie Hall Opening Night 1998,” “Keeping Score: Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony” (2004), “San Francisco Symphony at 100” (2012) and “The Thomashefskys” (2012), Tilson Thomas’s loving tribute to his grandparents Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who were pioneering stars of turn of the century Yiddish Theater.
In 2015 , Michael Tilson Thomas spoke with NYC-ARTS about his decades-long tenure with orchestras worldwide, including the London Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. In addition to co-founding the New World Symphony in Miami as a training ground for young musicians, he was a champion of contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters.
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Michael Tilson Thomas interview from 1971: ‘Young people are not interested in stock performances of the standard repertory. Neither am I’
By Alan Blyth
Gramophone
Tipped by Newsweek among others as a possible musical director in the not-too-distant future of the Cleveland, Philadelphia or Boston Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas is obviously a name we are sure to hear a great deal of before long. Already he has something of the Golden Boy aura of the young Bernstein — Bernstein himself has encouraged and advised Thomas over the past few years — and he himself has an air of levitation about him, not knowing perhaps quite how quickly news, and consequent engagements, follow these days.
His conversation is refreshingly agnostic about received ideas:
Item: ‘The generation gap in “serious” music is only now being felt as it has been already in the pop field. A programme of Cage’s prepared piano sonatas I gave on television disturbed people over 50. The younger ones understood the music intuitively. At a youth concert I conducted in Los Angeles including Varèse’s Deserts the audience found no difficulty, as their elders would have done, in understanding and sympathising with the music. Orchestras in future will simply have to take more of these works into their regular repertory if the institution is to survive. Indeed during the next 15 years I foresee a reformation of our major musical institutions. After all, they’re not artistically or economically very successful at the moment, are they?’
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Michael Tilson Thomas: the last heir to Leonard Bernstein’s television pulpit | Opinion
By Stuart N. Brotman
Miami Herald
South Florida will mourn Michael Tilson Thomas as a local institution-builder, the Los Angeles–born conductor who chose Miami Beach in 1987 to co-found the New World Symphony with Ted and Lin Arison, and who spent 37 years shaping classical music education in a city that had never had a resident orchestra of international stature.
The tributes are deserved. But the story behind that choice — why a conductor at the height of his international fame needed to build an alternative institution in Miami Beach at all — is largely a television story, and it is the part of his legacy most of this week’s obituaries will miss.
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Famed Jewish conductor Michael Tilson Thomas dies at 81
By Penny Schwartz
The Times of Israel
One year ago, Michael Tilson Thomas lifted his baton to conduct a concert in San Francisco that he said would be his last.
The scion of Yiddish theater and luminary of contemporary classical music had been diagnosed with a recurrence of brain cancer, and he knew his days were numbered.
“We all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap,’” he said on his website after conducting Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with the San Francisco Symphony, one of several orchestras he led during his storied career. He signed off: “Life is precious.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas made history as an openly gay conductor. Here’s how he paved the way for others
By Tony Bravo
San Francisco Chronicle
Michael Tilson Thomas’ five-decade career as a conductor and composer saw him reach the pinnacle of classical music.
Given his artistry and 25 years of leadership at the San Francisco Symphony, it’s fitting those achievements take center stage in his biography. But Thomas, who died Wednesday, April 22, at age 81 after a yearslong battle with glioblastoma, was also a quiet trailblazer for LGBTQ representation in the rarefied world of classical music.
From the time he partnered personally and professionally with Joshua Robison in 1976, they did not hide. While earlier in the 20th century, the relationship between British composer Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears was an open secret in the classical music world for almost 40 years (with discretion owing to England’s anti-homosexuality laws), others — like Thomas’ mentor, conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein — were only later able to live more visibly gay lives.
[…]
In a 2019 Chronicle profile of Robison, Thomas reflected on their relationship — which they believed was among the first same-sex relationships in classical music to be publicly acknowledged — with characteristic understatement.
“We were just … Michael and Joshua,” Thomas said. “It’s only now that I have more perspective on what that meant.”
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Metallica Pay Tribute to ‘S&M2’ Collaborator, Classical Music Icon Michael Tilson Thomas
By Kory Grow
Rolling Stone
Metallica paid tribute to the late conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, a classical music titan who led the San Francisco Symphony when collaborating with the band on its 2019 S&M2 concerts, in an Instagram post on Thursday. Thomas died at age 81 Wednesday after a battle with brain cancer, according to The New York Times.
“It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas,” Metallica wrote, describing the conductor, known as MTT, as “a towering figure in classical music” and recognizing him as a driving force behind the concerts.
“We cherished our time with MTT and learned so much working with him to prepare the S&M2 performances; it was a very high honor to have him on the podium for our shows,” they continued. “He will be sorely missed.”
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Arts Commentary: In Memoriam, Michael Tilson Thomas (1944-2026)
By Jonathan Blumhofer
The Arts Fuse
Among his many gifts, Michael Tilson Thomas, who died at 81 on April 22nd, mastered the art of timing.
Some of that may have been genetic: his grandparents were Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, and his father, Ted, worked on Hollywood sound stages. But, like his one-time mentor Leonard Bernstein, Tilson Thomas was often the right man in the right place at the right time.
That was certainly the case in October 1969, when, as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the 24-year-old stepped in, mid-concert, to replace an ailing William Steinberg at New York’s Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall).
MTT, as he was later styled, “had his golden opportunity and made the most of it,” The New York Times’ Harold Schonberg wrote. “A tall, thin young man, he came on stage with an air of immense confidence and authority and showed that his confidence was not misplaced.”
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Passing of Tilson Thomas reminds us of all the BPO’s great leaders
The Editorial Board
The Buffalo News
Buffalonians experienced a deep chord of sadness when the news of Michael Tilson Thomas’ death came last month. Those lucky enough to see the young maestro conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra during his 1971-79 reign as music director were consoled by their vivid memories.
Though his BPO tenure ended almost 50 years ago, Tilson Thomas returned to Buffalo several times in guest appearances with the orchestra and local residents have watched with pride as he went on to lead other major orchestras to considerable acclaim. […]
Tilson Thomas’ Buffalo stint may seem all but eclipsed by the cascading series of milestones and increasing international renown that followed, but the conductor’s Buffalo innovations still resonate. His informal pre-concert talks were key to his approach. In a 1972 interview with former News classical music critic, the late Herman Trotter, the conductor was careful in defining what he was trying to do: “At its broadest, what I really want to do is break down the formality between the stage and the audience. At its narrowest, the means I’ll employ will be the ‘talk’ about the music to be performed. … ‘blurring’ the edges between the talk and the concert − decompartmentalizing the experience.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas: A life devoted to music, mentorship and Mahler
By James Ambroff-Tahan
San Francisco Examiner
Michael Tilson Thomas, who died April 22 at age 81, was San Francisco Symphony’s longest-serving music director. For 25 years, he helped lift the ensemble into the upper echelon of the world’s orchestras with his passion for the art form and extraordinary music-making skills.
[…]
Thomas’ final performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was a fitting farewell as music director — effectively, his love song to San Francisco. The performance was as bittersweet as it was beautiful.
“Despite his illness, Michael had the piece hardwired deep within his subconscious and delivered a nuanced performance filled with raw emotion and a very poignant Adagietto,” Kleinbart said. “Retired colleagues returned to the stage to share in the historic performance and the orchestra joined with Michael in a beautiful rendering of a piece we had explored together over many years. Michael’s reputation for wearing his heart on his sleeve was no exception on this night, and the concert ended without a dry eye in the house.”
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Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Robison: A love story 50 years in the making
By Mark Leno
San Francisco Standard
Michael and Joshua. Joshua and Michael. A match made in heaven, inevitable, fated — or as said in Yiddish, beshert.
Michael and Joshua were together for 50 years before Joshua’s untimely death in February. Michael joined him two months to the day on Wednesday. It was my great fortune to have been best friends with them through their remarkable, accomplished, and loving journey together.
Their story began even before they became partners in 1976. They first met at Walter Reed Junior High School in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. These two boys knew each other from the school band — Joshua playing cello, Michael on oboe.
But that was just the beginning.
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