His compositions include From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990), Shówa/Shoáh (1995) for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002), and Meditations on Rilke (2019). He was the subject of the American Masters documentary Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is.
Life and career
Thomas was born on December 21, 1944, in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta (Meritzer) Thomas, a Broadwaystage manager and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He was the grandson of Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan. The family talent goes back to 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. Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting with 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, Thomas was a musical assistant and assistant conductor at the Bayreuth Festival. As a young man, he was driving and heard music "so powerful [he] pulled over to the side of the road." It was James Brown singing "Cold Sweat". He credited Brown with influencing his sense of rhythm.
Boston, Buffalo, New York, and Los Angeles
From 1968 to 1994, Thomas was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival seven times. After winning the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood in 1969, he 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 to international recognition at the age of 24. He stayed with the Boston Symphony as principal guest conductor until 1974 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.
Thomas conducting the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concert, 1977.
Between 1971 and 1977, Thomas 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. Thomas temporarily left the stage. In 2007, he returned to the Hollywood Bowl, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic again in the Mahler Eighth, asking jokingly, "Now where were we?"
New World Symphony
Tilson Thomas with Audrey Hepburn in 1990
In 1987, Thomas founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, an orchestral academy for 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 played an instrumental role in the development of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, which opened in 2011, and maintained a relationship with the organization as Artistic Director Laureate. (The two had personal history: Gehry sometimes babysat for Thomas when both were growing up in Los Angeles.) In March 2022, Thomas announced that he would stand down as artistic director of the New World Symphony as of June 1, 2022.
London
From 1988 to 1995, Thomas was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and recorded with them for such labels as Columbia (now Sony Classical), including Mahler's Symphony No. 3. From 1995, he held the title of principal guest conductor of the LSO, and became conductor laureate in 2016.
San Francisco
Thomas became the San Francisco Symphony's 11th music director in 1995. He made his debut with the orchestra in January 1974 conducting Mahler's Symphony No. 9. During his first season with the San Francisco Symphony, 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. During his tenure, the orchestra began to issue recordings on its own SFS Media label. He conducted Elvis Costello's Il Sogno.
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. 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.
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, with soloists such as Mason Bates, Measha Brueggergosman, Joshua Roman, Gil Shaham, Yuja Wang, and Jess Larsen, 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 April 15. The concert was later made available on YouTube. On March 20, 2011, Thomas also conducted the "YTSO2" (YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2) in Sydney.
In October 2017, the orchestra announced that 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.
Thomas was featured on the 2020 album S&M2 with thrash metal band Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. Thomas only conducted during the performance of "Scythian Suite, Opus 20 II: The Enemy God and the Dance of the Dark Spirits", "The Iron Foundry, Opus 19", and "The Unforgiven III", and then conducted "Enter Sandman" before moving to keyboards and leaving Edwin Outwater conducting the symphony orchestra.
Commemorative street sign "MTT Way"
In December 2023, a commemorative "MTT Way" street sign was unveiled at the corner of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue, outside Davies Symphony Hall.
As educator
Thomas was also devoted to music education. He led a series of education programs titled Keeping Score which offers insight into the lives and works of great composers.. Beginning in November 2006, it featured a television series, three one-hour documentary-style episodes and two live-concert programs. He founded the New World Symphony in Miami in 1987. Thomas led the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which brought young musicians from around the world together for a week of music making and learning for a first concert at Carnegie Hall in 2009.
Thomas served as president of the Tomashefsky Project, a $2million undertaking formed in 2017 that is intended to record and preserve his grandparents' theatrical achievements, and was on the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.
Due to health concerns, Thomas announced on March 2, 2022, that he would be stepping down as the artistic director of the New World Symphony and instead serve as the artistic director laureate.
Personal life
Thomas lived in San Francisco. He married Joshua Robison on November 2, 2014. The two were together for 50 years, having first met as 11 and 12-year-olds in a junior high orchestra. Robison died on February 22, 2026, at the age of 79.
On August 6, 2021, Thomas disclosed publicly for the first time that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, called glioblastoma multiforme.
Thomas returned to his hometown on January 9, 2022, to conduct—for the first time since his cancer disclosure—the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Despite the small audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall due to more than 43,000 newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, Thomas was greeted warmly. He proceeded to lead a concert of works by Gabriel Fauré, Thomas's own Meditations on Rilke—wistful reflections on life and death as the composer turned 75 in 2019—and to conclude, a performance of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. In 2023, Thomas was featured in the American Masters documentary Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is.
In February 2025, Thomas announced that his brain tumor had returned. His final public appearance was on April 26, 2025, when he conducted the San Francisco Symphony in a belated 80th birthday celebration concert.
Thomas died of the disease at his home in San Francisco on April 22, 2026, at the age of 81.
Film and television
Thomas first appeared on television in the Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, airing from 1971 to 1977. He regularly appeared on PBS. Several episodes of WNET's Great Performances series featured him. He ran a series for the BBC with the London Symphony Orchestra.
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.
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.
Thomas recorded extensively for labels including Columbia, Sony, Deutsche Grammophon (DG), Argo and RCA. His discography includes works by Bach, 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 was renowned for his interpretation of Mahler's music, recording all nine symphonies and other major orchestral works with the San Francisco Symphony. These recordings have been released on the high-fidelity audio format Super Audio CD on the San Francisco Symphony's own recording label.
Thomas's compositions include From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990), Shówa/Shoáh (1995, memorializing the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima), Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002), and Urban Legend (2002).
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 or baritone saxophone and orchestra
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind (2016) for mezzo-soprano, 2 female back-up singers, chamber orchestra, and bar band
↑Jones, Chuck; Klynn, Herbert; Woolery, Gerry (November 22, 1976). Carnival of the Animals (Animation, Comedy, Family). Mel Blanc, Michael Tilson Thomas. Chuck Jones Enterprises, Warner Bros. Television. Archived from the original on December 4, 2024. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
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