Michael Tilson Thomas

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)
• Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle, From the Archive, about MTT's first SFS performance (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
• San Francisco Symphony remembers MTT
• Barbara Bogatin, SFCV
• Sharon Su, "What I learned from MTT"
• Mark Swed, LA Times (MTT as an Angeleno and California)
• Nardine Saad, LA Times
• Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise
• Elaine Fine, Musical Assumptions
• Chicago Symphony Orchestra, "Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas"
• Tim Page, Washington Post (gift link)
• Anthony Tomassini, NY Times (gift link)
• Hannah Edgar, NY Times (gift link), on how MTT worked with and developed young musicians
• P.J. Grisar, The Forward
• The Times, unsigned
• The Telegraph, unsigned
• Richard Fairman, Financial Times
• New World Symphony
• 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
• London Symphony Orchestra

News from London

Something not-quite-old, something very new.

The news came out a few weeks ago that no, London will not be getting a new concert hall after all. This plan, to build a new Centre for Music at the current site of the Museum of London, dates from 2019.

What changed? Brexit and the announcement that Sir Simon Rattle was returning to Germany after a sadly short tenure at the London Symphony Orchestra. 

Closely related is today's news: Sir Antonio Pappano will take the helm of the LSO following Rattle's departure. He becomes Chief Conductor Designate in September, 2023, and steps down from Covent Garden at the end of the 2023-24 season. This opens up the top job at the ROH, of course.

Rattle to Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle

Photo: Mark Allan / Courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) spent goodness knows how long hoping to lure Sir Simon Rattle from Berlin back to London, and a few years back, they finally signed him.

Now that Brexit has arrived, Rattle is heading back to Germany, this time to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO, aka Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks) in 2023. Well, UK, you were warned about what might happen to the vibrant cultural scene if Brexit went through.

The mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, who is Rattle's wife, and their children live in Germany, where the children are in school. Money quotes:

“My reasons for accepting the role of principal conductor in Munich are entirely personal,” he said in the statement, “enabling me to better manage the balance of my work and be close enough to home to be present for my children in a meaningful way.” Mr. Rattle’s family is based in Berlin, where he led the Berlin Philharmonic from 2002 to 2018.

Mr. Rattle declined to comment beyond that statement. But he has been a vocal critic of Brexit, which was voted on after he accepted the London Symphony post in 2015. And progress has been sluggish on the Center for Music, the much-desired new home for the orchestra that was conceived alongside Mr. Rattle’s appointment.

He's succeeding the late Mariss Jansons at the BRSO. 

Rattle to LSO

The London Symphony Orchestra has announced that yes, indeed: Sir Simon Rattle, who is leaving the Berlin Philharmonic, will become the LSO's music director in September, 2017. Press release and remarks from Rattle at the link.

I'm going to update the list below of orchestras seeking music directors as appointments are made.

• New York Philharmonic
• National Symphony Orchestra
• City of Birmingham SO
• Berlin Philharmonic
• LSO: Simon Rattle appointed, 3/2/2015
• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
• Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
• Milwaukee Symphony
• Hong Kong Philharmonic
• Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
• San Diego Symphony
• Orchestra de Paris
• Orchestra Nationale de France
• Vienna Staatsoper / VPO