Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American

conductor Conductor or conduction may refer to: Music * Conductor (music), a person who leads a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra. * ''Conductor'' (album), an album by indie rock band The Comas * Conduction, a type of structured free improvisation ...

, pianist and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He is

Artistic Director An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre or dance company, who handles the organization's artistic direction. They are generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the ...

Laureate of the

New World Symphony New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

, an American orchestral academy based in

Miami Beach, Florida Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and artificial island, man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the ...

, Music Director Laureate of the

San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Fr ...

, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Biography

Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta Thomas, a Broadway

stage manager Stage management is a broad field that is generally defined as the practice of organization and coordination of an event or theatrical production. Stage management may encompass a variety of activities including the overseeing of the rehearsal p ...

and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and

Bessie Thomashefsky Bessie Thomashefsky (1873 – July 6, 1962), born Briche Baumfeld-Kaufman, was a Russian-born Jewish American singer, actress and comedian, a star in Yiddish theater beginning in the 1890s. She was the wife and stage partner of Boris Thomas ...

, who performed in the

Yiddish Theater District The Yiddish Theatre District, also called the Jewish Rialto and the Yiddish Realto, was the center of New York City's Yiddish theatre scene in the early 20th century. It was located primarily on Second Avenue, though it extended to Avenue B, b ...

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. Tilson Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting under

Ingolf Dahl Ingolf Dahl (June 9, 1912 – August 6, 1970) was a German-born American composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Biography Dahl was born Walter Ingolf Marcus in Hamburg, Germany, to a German Jewish father, attorney Paul Marcus, and his Swed ...

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 The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...

. Tilson Thomas lives in San Francisco with his husband and partner of over 40 years, Joshua Robison. The couple married on November 2, 2014. 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.

Career

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 Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...

; 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 Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...

, and

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...

. A sampling of Tilson Thomas's own compositions include ''From the Diary of Anne Frank'' (1990), ''Shówa/Shoáh'' (1995, memorializing the fiftieth anniversary of the

bombing of Hiroshima The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the on ...

), ''Poems of Emily Dickinson'' (2002) and ''Urban Legend'' (2002). 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 The YouTube Symphony Orchestra (YTSO) is an orchestra assembled by open auditions hosted by YouTube, the London Symphony Orchestra and several other worldwide partners. Launched on December 1, 2008, it is the first-ever online collaborative orches ...

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

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

Boston Symphony Orchestra The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, ...

, 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 an assistant conductor until 1974 and made several recordings with the orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon. He was

music director A music(al) director or director of music is the person responsible for the musical aspects of a performance, production, or organization. This would include the artistic director and usually chief conductor of an orchestra or concert band, the d ...

of the

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Faletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it p ...

from 1971 to 1979, and recorded for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

with the orchestra. Between 1971 and 1977, he also conducted the series of

Young People's Concerts The Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic are the longest-running series of family concerts of classical music in the world. Genesis They began in 1924 under the direction of "Uncle" Ernest Schelling. Earlier Family Matinees had b ...

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 The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2018. The Hollywood Bowl is known for its distin ...

, a (police) helicopter flew over the venue, disrupting the concert. This is when Tilson Thomas famously stormed offstage in the middle of the performance. 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.

New World and London

In 1987, Tilson Thomas founded the

, 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." He is currently the academy's artistic director. He played an instrumental role in the development of the

Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are considered ...

-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, which opened in 2011. (The two had personal history, with Gehry sometimes having baby-sat for Tilson Thomas back when both were growing up in Los Angeles.) In March 2022, Tilson Thomas announced that he is to stand down as artistic director of the New World Symphony as of 1 June 2022. 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.

San Francisco

Tilson Thomas became the

'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. 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 Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

, Beethoven and Weill, including semi-staged productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera-ballet ''

Mlada ''Mlada'' (russian: Млада, italic=yes, the name of a main character) was a project conceived in 1870 by Stepan Gedeonov (1816–1878), director of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres, originally envisioned as a ballet to be composed by ...

'', 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 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. In April 2005, he conducted the

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

premiere of ''The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater,'' partly as a tribute to his own grandparents. Other American orchestras have since performed this production, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...

Philadelphia Orchestra The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription ...

, New York Philharmonic, New World Symphony and

. It has also been recorded for future broadcast on PBS. Tilson Thomas collaborated with YouTube in 2009 to help create the

, 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

on Wednesday, April 15. The concert was later made available on YouTube. On March 20, 2011, Tilson Thomas also conducted the "YTSO2" (YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2) in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Film and TV

His first television appearances were in the

with the New York Philharmonic, airing from 1971 to 1977. 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.''Carnival of the Animals'' – IMDb
/ref> 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." 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

Partial discography

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.

List of compositions

Orchestra

* ''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

Chamber ensemble

* ''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

Awards

Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium The Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium is an honor presented to recording artists for the best compendium album in the classical music genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and which was originally called the ...

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

Conducting

, performing From the Diary of Anne Frank & Meditations on Rilke Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance *

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

Conducting

, performing '' Adams: Harmonielehre & Short Ride in a Fast Machine *

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

Conducting

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 7.'' *

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

Conducting the

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 6.'' *

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

Conducting the Ragazzi, the Peninsula Boys Chorus, the

San Francisco Girls Chorus The San Francisco Girls Chorus, established in 1978 by Elizabeth Appling and celebrating its 40th anniversary during the 2018-2019 Season, is a leading regional center for music education and performance for young women, ages 4–18, based in San Fr ...

, the

and

Chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

, performing ''

: The Firebird;'' '' The Rite of Spring;'' ''Perséphone''. *

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

Conducting the

, performing Prokofiev: ''

Romeo and Juliet ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetim ...

'' (scenes). Grammy Award for Best Classical Album *

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

Conducting

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 8.'' *

Conducting

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 7.'' *

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

Conducting

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 3,'' Kindertotenlieder.'' *

Conducting the Ragazzi, the Peninsula Boy Chorus, the

, the

and

, performing ''

: The Firebird;'' '' The Rite of Spring;'' ''Perséphone.'' Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance *

Conducting

, performing '' Mahler: Symphony No. 8.'' *

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...

Conducting the Cleveland Boys Choir and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, performing ''

Orff Carl Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata ''Carmina Burana'' (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education. Life Early life Carl O ...

: Carmina Burana.''

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

''The MTT Files'' produced by

Tom Voegeli Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

and American Public Media.

National Medal of Arts The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and Patronage, patrons of the arts. A prestigious American honor, it is the highest honor given to artists and ar ...

* 2009 National Medal of Arts.

Kennedy Center Honor The Kennedy Center Honors are annual honors given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. They have been presented annually since 1978, culminating each December in a gala celebrating five honor ...

* 2019 Kennedy Center Honor was presented December 8, 2019.

References

External links

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tilson Thomas, Michael 1944 births San Francisco Symphony 20th-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American conductors (music) 20th-century classical composers American classical pianists American male classical pianists American male classical composers American classical composers American male conductors (music) Grammy Award winners Jewish classical musicians Jewish classical pianists Jewish American classical composers American gay musicians LGBT classical composers LGBT Jews LGBT classical musicians LGBT people from the San Francisco Bay Area Living people American music educators Musicians from Los Angeles USC Thornton School of Music alumni London Symphony Orchestra principal conductors United States National Medal of Arts recipients 21st-century American composers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American pianists 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century LGBT people

Biography

Career

Boston, Buffalo, New York, and Los Angeles

New World and London

San Francisco

Film and TV

Partial discography

List of compositions

Orchestra

Chamber ensemble

Awards

See also

References

External links