Michael Tilson Thomas visits Google
November, 2008
Photo by Lisa Hirsch
(I took many photos that day, but most of them are a little blurry because MTT was perpetually in motion.)
Knowing this day would come did not make it any easier: Michael Tilson Thomas, universally known at MTT, died last night at his home in San Francisco, nearly five years after a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. I am tremendously saddened by his passing and especially by his illness. I'd hoped he would have a long and happy retirement, guest conducting, composing, and dreaming up all sorts of wonderful things.
I wrote an advance obituary for NPR, commissioned the week he announced he had a brain tumor and updated many times since owing to his amazing survival. (Huge thanks to Steve Smith for commissioning the piece.)
While researching the obit, I turned up some numbers numbers that describe his sheer impact on the San Francisco Symphony, of which he was music director from 1995 to 2020:
- He conducted around 1,800 concerts with SFS, from 1974 to 2025.
- His first concert showed the shape of things to come: it included Mahler's 9th.
- During his tenure, SFS presented 41 world or U.S. premieres.
- He appointed about 60 musicians, conductors, music librarians.
- He led festivals devoted to Beethoven, Bates, Stravinsky; Yiddish theater and its impact on Broadway and American music; the Barbary Coast; Mendelssohn and Ades; Schubert and Berg; Sofia Gubaidulina; George Benjamin; Leonard Bernstein; Russian music, and more.
- He conceived SFSoundBox and helped found SFS Media, the orchestra's own record label, which was among the first of any U.S. orchestra. (The Louisville Orchestra, I have learned, started its own label in 1950.)
In addition to all of that, he made more than 120 recordings with a number of orchestras and was awarded 12 Grammys.
He and his late husband, Joshua Robison, were very much a part of San Francisco, and MTT was loved throughout the city. The block of Grove that runs between Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House was renamed MTT Way in honor of him.
Be sure to check out the amazing collection of photos of MTT, Joshua, their beloved dogs, and more at his website.
On KQED's Forum, Alexis Madrigal spoke with Mark Leno, former California state senator and longtime friend of MTT and Joshua Robison, classical music critic Joshua Kosman, composer John Adams, soprano Julia Bullock, and conductor Donato Cabrera about MTT. You can listen to the archived broadcast.
Obituaries and memorials:
- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle obit (gift link)
- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, a beautiful appreciation (gift link)
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Joshua Kosman, The Gramophone, originally published in 2024
- Tony Bravo, SF Chronicle, a beautiful appreciation of MTT's life as a gay man and what he and Joshua Robison meant to gay people in classical music (gift link)
- Lisa Hirsch, NPR
- Janos Gereben, SFCV
- Gabe Meline, KQED
- Emily Shugerman, S.F Standard
- David Bratman, Kalimac's Corner
- Mark Leno remember his friends MTT and Joshua Robison, SF Standard
- Various tributes to MTT, S.F. Chronicle
- Mark Swed, LA Times (MTT as an Angeleno and California)
- Nardine Saad, LA Times
- Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise
- Elaine Fine, Musical Assumptions
- Tim Page, Washington Post (gift link)
- Anthony Tomassini, NY Times (gift link)
- P.J. Grisar, The Forward
- The Times, unsigned
- The Telegraph, unsigned
- Richard Fairman, Financial Times
- Amanda Rosa, Miami Herald
- Ronald Blum, AP
- Bachtrack, unsigned
- Leonard Slatkin
- Dave Hurwitz, Classics Today
Joshua Robison obituaries:
- Tony Bravo and Aidin Vaziri, San Francisco Chronicle, a heartfelt appreciation of MTT's husband, his partner of 50 years (gift link)
- Gabe Meline, KQED
- MTT's website
Thank you, Lisa.
ReplyDeleteThanks for including Kosman's piece on how MTT was always rethinking the music. When, for SFCV, I reviewed him conducting the LSO in Shostakovich's Fifth in 2015, I wrote, "This is at least the third time I’ve heard MTT conduct this symphony, and each time he’s taken the finale differently. He’s a versatile and thoughtful conductor with at least two excellent orchestras at his command."
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