Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist, and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. He gave his final performance with the San Francisco Symphony in April 2025 while fighting brain cancer.

Tilson Thomas was born, on December 21, 1944, in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta Thomas, a Broadway stage manager and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He is the grandson of Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan. The family talent goes back to Tilson Thomas's great-grandfather, Pincus, an actor and playwright, and before that to a long line of cantors; his father, Theodor Herzl Tomashefsky (Ted Thomas), was also a poet and painter.

He was an only child and musical prodigy. Tilson Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting under Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California, where he graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music '67 and MM '76. As a student of Friedelind Wagner, Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival.

Tilson Thomas lives in San Francisco. He married Joshua Robison, his partner for 38 years, on November 2, 2014. Robison died on February 22, 2026, at the age of 79.

On August 6, 2021, Tilson Thomas disclosed publicly for the first time that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, called glioblastoma multiforme.

On January 9, 2022, Tilson Thomas returned to his hometown to conduct—for the first time since his cancer disclosure—the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Despite the small audience at Walt Disney Hall due to more than 43,000 newly-diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in L.A. County, Tilson Thomas was greeted warmly. He proceeded to lead a concert of works by Gabriel Fauré, Tilson Thomas' own Meditations on Rilke—wistful reflections on life and death as the composer turned 75 in 2019—and to conclude, a performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony.

In February 2025, Tilson Thomas announced that his brain tumor had returned. His final public appearance was on April 26, 2025, when he conducted the San Francisco Symphony in a belated 80th birthday celebration concert.

Tilson Thomas has conducted a wide variety of music and is a particular champion of modern American works. He is also renowned for his interpretation of the works of Gustav Mahler; he has recorded all nine Mahler symphonies and other major orchestral works with the San Francisco Symphony. These recordings have been released on the high-resolution audio format Super Audio CD on the San Francisco Symphony's own recording label. Tilson Thomas is also known as a premier interpreter of the works of Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, and Steve Reich.