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.[1] 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.[2][3][4] The couple married on November 2, 2014.[5] In March 2022, Tilson Thomas disclosed publicly for the first time that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, called glioblastoma multiforme.[6][7]

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),[8] Shówa/Shoáh (1995, memorializing the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima),[9] Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002)[10] and Urban Legend (2002).[11]

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.[12]

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.[13]

Boston, Buffalo, New York, and Los Angeles

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[14] 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.[15]

Thomas conducting the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert, 1977.

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.[16]

In 2007, he returned to the Hollywood Bowl leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic again in the Mahler Eighth, announcing jokingly, "Now where were we?" He returned in 2013 with Mahler's Second Symphony, when another helicopter flew over the venue. He stopped the orchestra, but then resumed the performance.

His first television appearances were in the Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, airing from 1971 to 1977.[25] 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.[26]

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." [27]

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.

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.[28]

National Medal of Arts

• 2009 National Medal of Arts.

Kennedy Center Honor

• 2019 Kennedy Center Honor was presented December 8, 2019.[29]

• 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).