Conductor, composer and educator Michael Tilson Thomas, who led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years, establishing its reputation as a world-class orchestra, died on Wednesday at his home in San Francisco, according to a statement from his publicist, Constance Shuman. He was 81 years old.
In 2021, Thomas announced that he was being treated for a brain tumor. In 2022, he acknowledged that he had been battling glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer.
Thomas held the position of music director at the San Francisco Symphony [SFS] from 1995 to 2020 and was by far the orchestra's longest-serving music director. He won 12 Grammy awards, and under his direction, SFS achieved a superb degree of technical and musical polish.
In a statement, Priscilla Geeslin, the chair of the symphony's board, said:
"When Michael Tilson Thomas was named Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, I remember a feeling of pure exhilaration — as though something extraordinary had just been set in motion for all of us. What followed exceeded even that early excitement. On the podium, he brought brilliance, curiosity, and a singular voice that reshaped the orchestra. Off the podium, he revealed warmth, wit, and a generosity of spirit that made getting to know him as a friend an unexpected gift. Thomas didn't just lead the Symphony — he became part of the cultural fabric of San Francisco itself, expanding what it meant to be an orchestra in a city like ours. His impact reached far beyond the concert hall, touching the life of the city in ways both visible and deeply personal. And even after stepping down as Music Director, he never truly stepped away. He remained an integral part of the Symphony — artistically, intellectually, and as a guiding presence — continuing to shape and inspire the organization he helped define.
"We were, quite simply, so lucky to have him."
He was California-born and educated
Thomas, known throughout the classical world and beyond as MTT, was a man of vision, curiosity and enormous musical talent. He was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, 1944, into a theatrical family. His father was a stage manager turned movie and TV producer, while his paternal grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were Yiddish theater stars. Thomas, an only child, started piano studies early and took up the oboe as well. His plans for a professional career as a pianist were ended by an injury. His oboe practice led him to a junior high orchestra, where, at the age of 12, he met 11-year-old cellist Joshua Robison, who became his friend and, years later, his life partner.
At the University of Southern California, he studied with composer Ingolf Dahl and took up conducting. During his time at USC, he worked with Igor Stravinsky and other important composers. Stravinsky and Aaron Copland became friends and mentors to him, as did Leonard Bernstein, whom Thomas met in his early 20s.
His first major appointment was as an assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra [BSO] in 1969. William Steinberg was then the music director in Boston, and his poor health meant that Thomas conducted an unusually large number of concerts for an assistant conductor. He even took over for Steinberg mid-concert during a BSO visit to Lincoln Center. An October 1969 program included works by Joseph Haydn, Stravinsky, Charles Ives and Claude Debussy, composers of lifelong interest to Thomas.
His conducting career ranged from coast to coast
Thomas remained at the BSO until 1974 and appeared after that as a guest conductor. In 1971, he took the post of music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, a position he held until 1979.
In the mid-1970s, Thomas was living in New York City when Robison, his childhood friend, contacted him through his sister, the noted flutist Paula Robison. By 1976, the friends had become life partners and Joshua, an educator, had also become Thomas' business partner and manager. At a time when gay people lacked legal protections and many stayed in the closet to survive, their relationship was never much of a secret. The couple married in 2014. Robison died on February 22, 2026, after having suffered a spinal cord injury the previous August. He and Thomas were partners for nearly 50 years.
Following Thomas' departure from the Buffalo Philharmonic, there were glimpses of the opera career that could have been: He conducted the U.S. premiere of the three-act version of Alban Berg's Lulu at Santa Fe Opera, and led staged productions at New York City Opera, Cardiff, Chicago, Amsterdam and Houston.
Lacking a permanent music director position through much of the 1980s, Thomas guest-conducted at major orchestras and festivals all over the U.S. and Europe, including a stint as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985.
In 1987, Thomas co-founded the New World Symphony (NWS) in Miami Beach. The NWS is a training orchestra offering fellowships to highly skilled musicians who are just starting their professional careers. Since its founding, more than a thousand musicians have participated in its programs, and a number of current and past members of the SFS were members of the NWS.
Patti Niemi, who's been a percussionist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra since 1992, played with the NWS for its first four years, and commented on how important the orchestra is for young professionals. "When you finish music school, you're only trained to do one thing, and it's a race against time. You have a clock going because your full-time job is to practice, and nobody pays you for that. So to earn a living as a musician means taking time away from that practicing. He gave us a place to practice. We had a place not only to practice, but to do what we loved and get paid for it."
Thomas was instrumental in the creation of the New World Center, a Frank Gehry-designed campus that opened in 2011. Thomas was artistic director of the NWS until 2022, when he announced his battle with glioblastoma.
In 1988, Thomas became principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). After his appointment as music director in San Francisco, he became the LSO's principal guest conductor and later, the London orchestra's conductor laureate.
Thomas also had a long connection with the Ojai Music Festival in California, a haven for new music. He first performed there as a pianist, in 1965, then served as music director seven times.
His 25-year tenure at the San Francisco Symphony transformed the institution
When Thomas arrived in San Francisco in 1995, he was no stranger to the orchestra: His first appearance with them had been in January 1974.
He succeeded Edo de Waart and Herbert Blomstedt, who had spent much of their tenures building SFS, and Thomas inherited an orchestra that had been well-schooled by his immediate predecessors. De Waart was committed to performing new music, and had brought composer John Adams to SFS in 1979 as the new music adviser and creator of the New and Unusual Music Series. Blomstedt was more focused on the core European repertory of the 18th through 20th centuries.
Peter Pastreich, who was CEO of SFS when Thomas was hired, noted that "We considered Michael for the job in 1985, when we chose Blomstedt, but he wasn't quite ready then, though we all knew he was a gigantic talent. By the time of our next search, he had matured, partly due to his experience as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and he was clearly ready.
"After he was announced as our next Music Director, Michael asked me about his being openly gay. I told him I thought that would be an advantage, not a disadvantage, here, since San Francisco has a big and active gay community."
Thomas' first season made an explosive impact: He performed a work by an American composer on every program, including Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, John Adams, Irving Berlin and John Philip Sousa. Many of these names would appear again and again over the years; far less present were works by female or Black composers, or works by less accessible male American composers like Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt, missing an opportunity to further expand the orchestra's repertory.
Asked about how the orchestra changed under Thomas, Pastreich said, "Under Michael, the orchestra's sound became more lyrical, and more flexible — both because of the new repertory he programmed, and his focus on the quality of the orchestra's sound. MTT knew the playing of every musician in the orchestra, and he always treated musicians with respect."
Thomas launched several projects that brought the orchestra to an audience far beyond San Francisco. He founded and narrated Keeping Score, a series of television and radio documentaries about famous composers and their works. The orchestra started its own recording label, SFS Media, in 2001, the first American orchestra to do so. And the orchestra regularly toured the United States, Europe and Asia.
He made more than 120 recordings with orchestras including the SFS, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic..
In 2017, Thomas announced his decision to retire from the SFS, citing a chance to begin "a new period of creative possibilities" as one goal, which was assumed to include more time spent composing. His own compositions appeared on his San Francisco programs over the years, but his work was also heard well outside California. In 1991, for example, UNICEF commissioned his work From the Diary of Anne Frank, featuring Audrey Hepburn as narrator.
In 2023, Thomas gave a number of farewell concerts with several of the orchestras with whom he was closely associated. Three concerts with the San Francisco Symphony in Jan. 2024, with the conductor leading performances of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, were billed as his final performances with his beloved ensemble. But he conducted for the last time at a belated 80th birthday celebration on April 26, 2025, two months after announcing that his brain tumor had recurred. His survivors include his sisters-in-law, the eminent flutist Paula Robison and Deborah Robison.
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