Remembering symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas

Fresh Air

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🗓️ 1 May 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

We remember conductor, composer and musician Michael Tilson Thomas, who died April 22 at age 81. He was a longtime music director of The San Francisco Symphony, known for his innovation, his ability to translate classical music for the general public, and for fostering contemporary music. He founded the New World Symphony for young players. He got his musical inheritance from his grandparents, who were stars of the Yiddish theatre. When he was a kid, his grandmother took him on stage and pointed up to the last row in the balcony, telling him: “Up there are the cheapest seats and in those seats are the people who love the show the most. Whatever you’re doing you must remember that it must reach those people.” He spoke with Terry Gross in 1994 and 2012.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley. Michael Tilson Thomas, the composer and conductor who
0:06.1	presided over the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, died last week at age 81. He had
0:12.8	battled brain cancer since 2022. The musical and social impact of Tilson Thomas ranged far beyond the podium. As an educator,
0:23.7	he co-founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, a place for musicians to launch their
0:28.8	careers. He composed and performed original works. As a TV host on PBS, he presented a 10-part
0:36.9	multi-year series about classical music,
0:39.7	as well as a two-hour special about his own grandparents.
0:43.4	And by being open in San Francisco about his half-century private relationship with his life partner,
0:49.8	Tilson Thomas was an early and influential figure in the gay rights movement.
0:55.5	Michael Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles in 1944, into an artistic family that stretched
1:01.2	back for generations. His paternal grandparents, Boris and Bessie Tomashefsky, as both
1:07.7	stars and organizers of a national road company, helped establish the American Yiddish theater.
1:14.1	In 2012, Tilson Thomas celebrated them in a great performances TV special called The Tomashevskys.
1:21.6	Their son, Tony, Tilson Thomas' father, also was in show business.
1:26.7	He was a producer of the classic Orson Welles radio show, Mercury Theater on the Air, and later for television, wrote for such programs as Death Valley Days and Lassie.
1:38.0	Michael Tilson Thomas gravitated to television as well. In 2000, five years after joining the San Francisco Symphony and establishing
1:46.4	himself as a world-class conductor, he was interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes, who asked him
1:52.7	how he saw his job as a conductor. In my mind, the conductor is much more like a director
2:00.0	in the theater. It's very clear to me, perhaps because of my family, that the musicians are the ones who are actually doing the playing.
2:07.6	And I am there to help them focus and clarify what they need to do so that they appear to their very best and feel that freedom and confidence to be their very best.
2:22.3	Because in the process of playing these thousands of notes, and there are thousands of notes they're playing in every performance,
2:28.3	they need sometimes help to say, ah, here, make more space for your colleagues over here.
	...

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