Michael Tilson Thomas, the Grammy-winning conductor who transformed the San Francisco Symphony into one of the world's leading orchestras, has died at 81, according to spokesperson Connie Shuman. He died at his home in San Francisco, Shuman said. The conductor had undergone brain tumour surgery in 2021 and announced in February 2025 that the tumour had returned, Shuman added. His final performance with the San Francisco Symphony took place in April 2025, Shuman noted.
Tilson Thomas won 12 Grammy Awards from 39 nominations and was a Kennedy Centre honoree in 2019, according to his official biography. He was born in Los Angeles on 21 December 1944, his biography states. His father Ted worked as a producer with New York's Mercury Theater Company and later in film and television in Los Angeles, according to family records. His mother Roberta was head of research for Columbia Pictures, those records show. His grandparents Bessie and Boris Thomashefsky were pioneers in American Yiddish theatre, according to historical accounts.
It's meant to have various intriguing and alluring, questioning things that you hear on first hearing. But by its very nature it's holding a lot of other secrets or a lot of other perspectives much closer to its chest, which only with repeated hearing you start realizing are there.
He studied at the University of Southern California and graduated in 1967, his biography says. Before graduating, he collaborated with Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen, according to his biography. He served as co-music director and later music director at California's Ojai Festival in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his biography states. He worked as an assistant at Germany's Bayreuth Festival in 1966, according to his biography. He won the Koussevitzky Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1968 and became assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1969, his biography notes. His New York debut was at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall on 22 October 1969, substituting for an ill William Steinberg, according to concert archives. He conducted Robert Starer's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra and Strauss' 'Till Eulenspiegel' at that debut, those archives show.