Michael Tilson Thomas

Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta Thomas, a Broadway stage manager and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan. The family talent goes back to Tilson Thomas's great-grandfather, Pincus, an actor and playwright, and before that to a long line of cantors; his father, Theodor Herzl Tomashefsky (Ted Thomas), was also a poet and painter.

He was an only child and musical prodigy.^[2] Tilson Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting under Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California, where he graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music '67 and MM '76. As a student of Friedelind Wagner, Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival.

Tilson Thomas lives in San Francisco with his husband and partner of over 40 years, Joshua Robison.^[3][4][5] The couple married on November 2, 2014.^[6] On August 6, 2021, Tilson Thomas disclosed publicly for the first time that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, called glioblastoma multiforme.^[7][8][9]

On January 9, 2022, Tilson Thomas returned to his hometown to conduct—for the first time since his cancer disclosure—the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Despite the small audience at Walt Disney Hall due to more than 43,000 newly-diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in L.A. County, Tilson Thomas was greeted warmly by the appreciative audience. He proceeded to lead an acclaimed concert of works by Gabriel Fauré, Tilson Thomas' own Meditations on Rilke—wistful reflections on life and death as the composer turned 75 in 2019—and to conclude, a stunning performance of Sergei Prokofiev's monumental 5th Symphony.^[10]

Tilson Thomas has conducted a wide variety of music and is a particular champion of modern American works. He is also renowned for his interpretation of the works of Gustav Mahler; he has recorded all nine Mahler symphonies and other major orchestral works with the San Francisco Symphony. These recordings have been released on the high-resolution audio format Super Audio CD on the San Francisco Symphony's own recording label. Tilson Thomas is also known as a premier interpreter of the works of Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and Steve Reich.

A sampling of Tilson Thomas's own compositions include From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990),^[11] Shówa/Shoáh (1995, memorializing the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima),^[12] Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002)^[13] and Urban Legend (2002).^[14]

Tilson Thomas has also been devoted to music education. He leads a series of education programs titled Keeping Score which offers insight into the lives and works of great composers, and led a series of Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. Tilson Thomas founded the New World Symphony in Miami in 1987. Most recently, Tilson Thomas has led two incarnations of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which brings young musicians from around the world together for a week of music making and learning.

Tilson Thomas currently serves as president of the Tomashefsky Project, a $2 million undertaking formed in 2017 that is intended to record and preserve his grandparents' theatrical achievements, and is on the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.^[15]

Due to health concerns, Tilson Thomas announced on March 2, 2022, he would be stepping down as the Artistic Director of the New World Symphony and instead serve as the Artistic Director Laureate.^[16]

From 1968 to 1994, Tilson Thomas was the Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival seven times. After winning the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood in 1969, Tilson Thomas was named Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That same year, he made his conducting debut with the orchestra, replacing an unwell William Steinberg mid-concert and thereby coming into international recognition at the age of 24. He stayed with the Boston Symphony as Principal Guest Conductor until 1974^[17] and made several recordings with the orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon. He was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1971 to 1979, and recorded for Columbia Records with the orchestra.^[18]

 

Between 1971 and 1977, he also conducted the series of Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic as well as the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra based in Los Angeles. From 1981 to 1985, he was principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. During a 1985 performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl, a (police) helicopter flew over the venue, disrupting the concert. Tilson temporarily left the stage.^[19]

In 2007, he returned to the Hollywood Bowl leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic again in the Mahler Eighth, announcing jokingly, "Now where were we?"

In 1987, Tilson Thomas founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, an orchestral academy for gifted young musicians whose stated mission is "to prepare highly-gifted graduates of distinguished music programs for leadership roles in orchestras and ensembles around the world."^[20] He played an instrumental role in the development of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, which opened in 2011, and currently maintains a relationship with the organization as Artistic Director Laureate.^[21] (The two had personal history, with Gehry sometimes having baby-sat for Tilson Thomas back when both were growing up in Los Angeles.^[21]) In March 2022, Tilson Thomas announced that he is to stand down as Artistic Director of the New World Symphony as of June 1, 2022.^[7]

From 1988 to 1995, Tilson Thomas was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), and recorded with them for such labels as Columbia (now Sony Classical), including the Symphony No. 3 of Mahler. From 1995, he held the title of principal guest conductor with the LSO, and became conductor laureate in 2016.

Tilson Thomas became the San Francisco Symphony's 11th Music Director in 1995. He originally made his debut with the orchestra in January 1974 conducting Mahler's Symphony No. 9. During his first season with the San Francisco Symphony, Tilson Thomas included a work by an American composer on nearly every one of his programs, including the first performances ever by the orchestra of music by Lou Harrison, and culminated with "An American Festival," a two-week focus on American music.^[22]

In June 2000, Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony presented a landmark 12-concert American Mavericks Festival, recognizing the innovative works of 20th century American composers. Additional season-ending festivals in Davies Symphony Hall have included explorations of the music of Wagner, Prokofiev, Mahler, Stravinsky, Beethoven and Weill, including semi-staged productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera-ballet Mlada, Beethoven's Fidelio, and Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.

During his tenure, the orchestra began to issue recordings on its own SFS Media label.

In April 2005, he conducted the Carnegie Hall premiere of The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, partly as a tribute to his own grandparents.^[23] Other American orchestras have since performed this production, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, New World Symphony and San Francisco Symphony. It has also been recorded for future broadcast on PBS.^[24]

Tilson Thomas collaborated with YouTube in 2009 to help create the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra whose members were selected from 30 countries based on more than 3,000 video auditions on YouTube. The Orchestra, as well as such soloists as Mason Bates, Measha Brueggergosman, Joshua Roman, Gil Shaham, Yuja Wang, and Jess Larsen, and participated in a classical music summit in New York City at the Juilliard School over three days. The event culminated in a live concert at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, April 15. The concert was later made available on YouTube.^[25] On March 20, 2011, Tilson Thomas also conducted the "YTSO2" (YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2) in Sydney.^[26]

In October 2017, the orchestra announced that Tilson Thomas would conclude his tenure as its music director at the close of the 2019–2020 season, and subsequently take the title of music director laureate.^[27][22]

His first television appearances were in the Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, airing from 1971 to 1977.^[28] He has also made regular appearances on PBS, with broadcasts featuring Tilson Thomas airing from 1972 through 2008. Eight episodes of WNET's Great Performances series have featured Tilson Thomas. He has also been featured on Japan's NHK and the BBC many times in the last three decades.

In 1976, Tilson Thomas appeared alongside Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in a prime-time special, Bugs and Daffy's Carnival of the Animals, a combined live action/animated broadcast of The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns.^[29]

In 2011, he hosted a concert stage show celebrating his grandparents and the music of American Yiddish theatre The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which aired in 2012 on the PBS series "Great Performances." ^[30]

Tilson Thomas hosted the Keeping Score television series, nine one-hour documentary-style episodes and eight live-concert programs, which began airing nationally on PBS stations in early November 2006. He and the San Francisco Symphony have examined the lives and music of Gustav Mahler, Dmitri Shostakovich, Charles Ives, Hector Berlioz, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Keeping Score discography

• Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony – 2004
• Beethoven's Eroica – 2006
• Copland and the American Sound – 2006
• Stravinsky's Rite of Spring – 2006
• Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique – 2009
• Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 – 2009
• Ives' Holiday Symphony – 2009
• Mahler: Origins and Legacy – 2011

Tilson Thomas has made more than 120 recordings, including works by Bach, Mahler, Beethoven, Prokofiev and Stravinsky as well as his pioneering work with the music of Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Steve Reich, John Cage, Ingolf Dahl, Morton Feldman, George Gershwin, John McLaughlin and Elvis Costello. He has recorded the complete orchestral works of Gustav Mahler with the San Francisco Symphony.

• From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990) for narrator and orchestra
• Shówa/Shoáh (1995)
• Agnegram (1998)
• Whitman Songs (1999) for vocal baritone and orchestra
• Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002) for vocal soprano and orchestra
• Urban Legend (2002) for contrabassoon and orchestra
• Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind (2016) for mezzo-soprano, 2 female back-up singers, chamber orchestra, and bar band
• Meditations on Rilke (2019) for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra

• Street Song for Symphonic Brass (1988) for 3 C trumpets, B-flat flugelhorn, 4 horns in F, 2 trombones, bass trombone, and tuba
• Street Song for Brass Quintet (1988) for brass quintet
• Five Songs (1988) for vocal baritone and piano
• Grace (1993) for vocal soprano
• Fame, from Poems of Emily Dickinson (2001)
• Island Music (2003) for 2 solo marimba, 2 tutti marimba, and 2 percussion
• Notturno (2005) for flute and string quintet + harp (also available for flute and piano)
• Stay Together (2006) for electronics

Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium

• 2021 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing From the Diary of Anne Frank & Meditations on Rilke

Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance

• 2013 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Adams: Harmonielehre & Short Ride in a Fast Machine
• 2006 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 7.
• 2003 Conducting the San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 6.
• 2000 Conducting the Ragazzi, the Peninsula Boys Chorus, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, performing Stravinsky: The Firebird; The Rite of Spring; Perséphone.
• 1997 Conducting the San Francisco Symphony, performing Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (scenes).

Grammy Award for Best Classical Album

• 2010 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 8.
• 2006 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 7.
• 2004 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 3, Kindertotenlieder.
• 2000 Conducting the Ragazzi, the Peninsula Boy Chorus, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, performing Stravinsky: The Firebird; The Rite of Spring; Perséphone.

Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance

• 2010 Conducting San Francisco Symphony, performing Mahler: Symphony No. 8.
• 1976 Conducting the Cleveland Boys Choir and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, performing Orff: Carmina Burana.

Peabody Award

• 2007 The MTT Files produced by Tom Voegeli and American Public Media.^[31]

National Medal of Arts

• 2009 National Medal of Arts.

Kennedy Center Honor

• 2019 Kennedy Center Honor was presented December 8, 2019.^[32]

• San Francisco Symphony
• San Francisco Symphony Chorus
• New World Symphony Orchestra

• Official website  
• Michael Tilson Thomas at IMDb
• Michael Tilson Thomas at AllMusic
• Michael Tilson Thomas collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Michael Tilson Thomas (April 16, 2001). "Making Anything Sound Good". NewMusicBox (Interview). Interviewed by Frank J. Oteri (published May 1, 2001).