Michael Tilson Thomas, legendary US conductor and ‘bad boy of classical music’, dies at 81
Former child prodigy Michael Tilson Thomas led many of the world’s top orchestras, including 25 years with the San Francisco Symphony
Grammy-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the birdlike maestro affectionately dubbed MTT and a “bad boy of classical music” who has led almost all the major orchestras of the United States and Europe since his teen years, has died in his San Francisco home.
He had a brain tumour removed in 2021 and underwent months of therapy.
The 1960s wunderkind long served as the San Francisco Symphony’s music director and later the conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, leading the latter ensemble on regular tours in Europe, the US and Japan, as well as the Salzburg Festival. He was also a guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 1980s. He last performed in Hong Kong in 2012, with the San Francisco Symphony.
In recent years, he had returned to the stage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall to present pandemic-weary audiences with electrifying concerts of Sergei Prokofiev’s wartime Symphony No 5, his own personal Meditations on Rilke and Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, among others.
The 2019 Kennedy Centre honoree, a protege of the late Leonard Bernstein, was a gifted pianist known for his exuberant compositions and ability to break down musical genres, particularly his dynamic interpretations of Gustav Mahler. He also specialised in music from Russia and works by George Gershwin and his friend and colleague, Aaron Copland.