Michael Tilson Thomas, Longtime San Francisco Symphony Leader, Dies at 81
The San Francisco Symphony's longtime music director had deep roots in American theater, from his Thomashefsky grandparents to his staging of Bernstein's WEST SIDE STORY.
The New York Times reports Michael Tilson Thomas, the American conductor, pianist, and composer who led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years, has died at 81. His death, at his San Francisco home on Wednesday. The cause was glioblastoma, a brain cancer he had lived with publicly since 2021.
Though best known in the classical music world, Tilson Thomas had roots that ran directly through the American theater. He was the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the reigning stars of New York's Yiddish theater in the early 20th century, and his father, Ted Thomas, worked as a Broadway stage manager before moving into film and television. Tilson Thomas spent years honoring that heritage through The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, a semi-staged concert piece he premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2005 and later toured with major orchestras. The project grew into the Thomashefsky Project, dedicated to preserving Yiddish theater records and performance materials.
Theater audiences also knew him for bringing a stage sensibility to the concert hall. During his San Francisco tenure, he mounted semi-staged, video-enhanced productions of Britten's Peter Grimes and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, reframing what an orchestra program could look like. Bernstein, whom he met as a young fellow at Tanglewood in 1968, remained a lifelong mentor.
Tilson Thomas announced in February 2025 that his tumor had returned and led his final performance that April, a belated 80th birthday concert with the San Francisco Symphony. His husband, Joshua Robison, died earlier this year. He is survived by an extensive recording legacy, 12 Grammy Awards, and the New World Symphony, the Miami Beach training academy he founded in 1987.
