About
About MTT
Michael Tilson Thomas was Co-Founder and Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra and Distinguished Professor of Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Born in Los Angeles, he was the third generation of his family to pursue an artistic career. His grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America; his father, Ted Thomas, was a producer at the Mercury Theater Company in New York before moving to Los Angeles, where he worked in film and television; and his mother, Roberta Thomas, was the head of research for Columbia Pictures.
MTT co-founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, a postgraduate orchestral academy dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in orchestral music. New World Symphony has long been at the forefront of developments in the arts and in education. As Artistic Director Laureate he worked with NWS Fellows to further their performance abilities and to expand their understanding of professional responsibilities in our ever-changing musical environment. Of the more than 1,300 alumni of the New World Symphony, 90% maintain careers in music, often as musicians or administrators in major orchestras. Since 2011, the campus of the New World Symphony has been the technologically advanced, Frank Gehry-designed New World Center.
MTT began his formal studies at the University of Southern California, where he studied piano with John Crown and conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl. At age 19 he was named Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. During this same period, he was the pianist and conductor in master classes of Gregor Piatigorsky and Jascha Heifetz and worked with Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen and Copland on premieres of their compositions at Los Angeles’ Monday Evening Concerts.
In 1969, after winning the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, MTT was appointed Assistant Conductor and pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That year he also made his New York debut with the BSO and gained international recognition after replacing Music Director William Steinberg mid-concert. He was later appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he held until 1974. He was Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979 and a Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985. In 1987, he co-founded and became Artistic Director of the New World Symphony. That same year, he was appointed Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and served in that role until 1995, when he became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. As a guest conductor, he appeared with orchestras worldwide, including the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.
MTT was a two-time Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, curating and conducting series at the hall from 2003 to 2005 and from 2018 to 2019. In the most recent series, he led Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America both at the hall and on tour in Asia, opened the Carnegie Hall season over two evenings with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted two programs with the Vienna Philharmonic, and finished with a pair of concerts leading the New World Symphony.
A winner of 12 Grammy Awards, MTT appears on more than 140 recordings. His discography includes The Mahler Project, a collection of the composer’s complete symphonies and works for voice and orchestra performed with the San Francisco Symphony, as well as pioneering recordings of music by Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Steve Reich, John Cage, Ingolf Dahl, Morton Feldman, George Gershwin, John McLaughlin and Elvis Costello. His recordings span repertoire from Bach and Beethoven to Debussy and Stravinsky, and include collaborations with artists ranging from Sarah Vaughan to Metallica.
His television work includes a series with the London Symphony Orchestra for BBC Television, broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts from 1971 to 1977, and numerous productions on PBS’s Great Performances. With the San Francisco Symphony, he created a multi-tiered media project, Keeping Score, which includes a television series, websites, and radio programs. He received a Peabody Award for his SFS Media radio series The MTT Files.
MTT’s compositions are published by G. Schirmer. In 1991, he and the New World Symphony were presented in a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF in the United States, featuring Audrey Hepburn as narrator in performances of MTT’s work From the Diary of Anne Frank, which was commissioned by UNICEF. This piece has since been translated and performed in many languages worldwide. In August 1995, he led the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in the premiere of his composition Shówa/Shoáh, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. His vocal music includes settings of poetry by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, which were premiered by Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming, respectively. In 2016, Yuja Wang premiered his piano piece You Come Here Often?. Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: GRACE: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas, a four-disc box set of MTT’s compositions on Pentatone, The Complete Columbia, CBS and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical and The Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence.
MTT was an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Musical America’s Musician of the Year and Conductor of the Year, was Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year and has been profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s Nightline and PBS’s American Masters. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is a member of the California Hall of Fame and Miami Beach Hall of Fame, and was a 2019 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2022 he gave the Commencement address at The Juilliard School.