Davies Symphony Hall
April 26, 2025
Back in 2021, MTT announced that he was being treated for a brain tumor, and followed up in 2022 to say that it was a glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and extremely serious cancer.
He has conducted at SFS and elsewhere since the fall of 2021, and when he led Mahler's Fifth Symphony in January, 2024, it seemed those would be his last concerts with SFS, an orchestra that he built into a great ensemble over the course of 25 years as its music director.
But now he's retiring from conducting, owing to a recurrence of the brain tumor. On April 26, the San Francisco Symphony held a concert in honor of his 80th birthday. It was a bittersweet occasion, marked by great love and affection for MTT and sadness at his farewell to conducting and to this orchestra. The conductor is frail and I was deeply touched to see the care with which Joshua Robison, MTT's husband (and partner since the 1970s), Edwin Outwater, and Teddy Abrams accompanied MTT on and off stage. It's what anyone would have been honored to do, I feel.
But MTT's sense of humor and determination are what they always have been–he called for a drumroll, to much laughter, as he mounted the podium for Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
The program didn't have any Mahler or Stravinsky–composers he conducted with such flair over so many years–but nonetheless it was a program that suited him. The Respighi and Britten were predictably excellent, full of color and spirit and fun for him.
I loved hearing various songs he's written over the years, deeply influenced by Broadway and the Great American Songbook, with marvelous performances by Sasha Cooke, Ben Jones, Frederick von Stade, and Jessica Vosk. The singers were all wonderful, and nearing 80 herself, Flicka remains a great artist. It was a special pleasure to hear her again, her patrician phrasing and beautiful French in Debussy's "La flute de Pan," from Cahnson de Bilitis, with an equally great contribution from pianist John Wilson.
The concert closed with a lot of clapping and chanting "MTT" rhythmically to MTT's arrangement of the Bar Mitzvah Waltz. And then there was a balloon drop, of blue balloons.
Here are the program and participants:
Michael Tilson Thomas conductor
Teddy Abrams conductor
Edwin Outwater conductor
Sasha Cooke vocalist
Ben Jones vocalist
Frederica von Stade vocalist
Jessica Vosk vocalist
San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Jenny Wong director
San Francisco Symphony
BENJAMIN BRITTEN The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
JOSEPH RUMSHINSKY (arr. Michael Tilson Thomas) Overture from Khantshe in Amerike
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS “Immer wieder” from Meditations on Rilke
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS (orch. Bruce Coughlin) “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful”
CLAUDE DEBUSSY “La flûte de Pan” from Chansons de Bilitis
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS (orch. MTT/Bruce Coughlin) “Drift Off to Sleep”
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS (orch. MTT/Bruce Coughlin) “Answered Prayers”
FRANK LOESSER “Take Back Your Mink” from Guys and Dolls
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS (orch. MTT/Larry Moore) “Sentimental Again”
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS “Grace”
LEONARD BERNSTEIN Finale from Chichester Psalms
OTTORINO RESPIGHI Roman Festivals
"Some Other Time" from Leonard Bernstein's On The Town (lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green)
MTT's arrangement of Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl's Bar Mitzvah March, which was part of MTT's The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater
Elsewhere: