Michael Tilson Thomas, a leading American conductor for a half-century who headed orchestras in Buffalo, Miami, London and San Francisco while also composing, has died aged 81. The conductor died at his San Francisco home, according to spokesperson Connie Shuman, following a battle with a brain tumour.
Career and Achievements
Throughout his illustrious career, Tilson Thomas secured 12 Grammy Awards from 39 nominations and was honoured as a Kennedy Centre recipient in 2019. Speaking to The Associated Press in 2004 about classical music, he explained: "It's meant to have various intriguing and alluring, questioning things that you hear on first hearing," adding: "But by its very nature it's holding a lot of other secrets or a lot of other perspectives much closer to its chest, which only with repeated hearing you start realizing are there."
Born in Los Angeles on 21st December 1944, Tilson Thomas came from an artistic family. His father Ted worked as a producer with New York's Mercury Theater Company before moving to Los Angeles to work in film and television. His mother Roberta served as head of research for Columbia Pictures. His grandparents, Bessie and Boris Thomashefsky, were trailblazers in American Yiddish theatre. He took up piano as a youngster and studied at the University of Southern California. By the time he graduated in 1967, he had already collaborated with Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Conductor Leonard Bernstein told The New York Times Magazine in a 1971 profile: "I don't fling the word genius around lightly, but I fling it around about Michael. He reminds me of me at that age, except that he knows more than I did," adding: "Not only music, but things like the functions of the brain, cerebrology, physics, biochemistry."
Early Career and Key Roles
Tilson Thomas served as co-music director and later music director at California's Ojai Festival during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He worked as an assistant at Germany's Bayreuth Festival in 1966, secured the Koussevitzky Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1968 and took up a role as assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1969.
His New York debut came at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall on 22nd October 1969, when he stepped in mid-concert for an unwell William Steinberg. Tilson Thomas conducted Robert Starer's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, alongside Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel." Critic Harold C. Schonberg observed in the Times: "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," noting: "He takes naturally to this music, as might be expected of a Tanglewood graduate and a pupil of Pierre Boulez."
Tilson Thomas served as the BSO's principal guest conductor between 1972 and 1974, and held the position of music director with the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979, before becoming principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985. In 1987, he co-founded Miami's New World Symphony, where he remained as artistic director until 2021. His career also included a tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1995, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020.
Compositions and Personal Life
Among Tilson Thomas' compositions are "Grace" (1988), "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind" (2015-16) and "Meditations on Rilke" (2019). His husband, Joshua Robison, died on February 22 while recovering from a fall he sustained last August. The couple first met while playing in the orchestra at North Hollywood Junior High School (now known as Walter Reed Middle School), became partners in 1976 and wed in 2014.
Following brain tumour surgery in 2021, Tilson Thomas returned to conducting before announcing in February 2025 that the tumour had come back. His final performance with the San Francisco Symphony took place in April 2025. When announcing that his final concert would be held in San Francisco on 26 April 2025, as a belated celebration of his 80th birthday, Thomas released a statement reflecting on his mortality. "At that point we all get to say the old show business expression, 'It's a wrap,'" he said. "A coda is a musical element at the end of a composition that brings the whole piece to a conclusion. A coda can vary greatly in length. My life's coda is generous and rich."
