Michael Tilson Thomas

A towering figure among America’s conductors, Michael Tilson Thomas gained international renown not only for his command of mainstream repertoire but also for the breadth and daring of his programming. Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles in 1944 into an artistic family—his paternal great-grandfather was a star of New York’s Yiddish theatre, his father a Broadway stage manager. He showed exceptional talent as a young pianist and later as a student at the University of Southern California, where he cultivated his natural curiosity and began building strikingly diverse concert programs. He was appointed musical director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra at the age of 19, where he conducted premiere performances of works by, among others, Stravinsky, Boulez, and Stockhausen. Tilson Thomas displayed the breadth of his talents during his time as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (1988-95) and notably while music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (1995-2020). In the latter post, he shaped revelatory performances and recordings of great symphonic landmarks, including The Mahler Project, a 22-volume set of the composer’s complete symphonies and orchestral songs. As an active composer himself, Tilson Thomas premiered significant works by leading 20th-century American authors including Charles Ives, John Cage, and Steve Reich. Despite being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2021, he continued to work as music director laureate of his San Francisco orchestra and artistic director of the New World Symphony, the orchestra he founded in 1987. He died on April 23, 2026.