Michael Tilson Thomas has passed away. The celebrated conductor, who led orchestras in Buffalo, Miami, London and San Francisco while also composing, died at the age of 81. Following brain tumour surgery in 2021, Tilson Thomas returned to the podium before announcing in February 2025 that the tumour had returned. His final performance with the San Francisco Symphony took place in April 2025, and he passed away at his San Francisco home, according to spokesperson Connie Shuman.

Throughout his distinguished career, Tilson Thomas amassed 12 Grammy Awards from 39 nominations and was honoured as a Kennedy Centre recipient in 2019. Speaking to The Associated Press in 2004 about classical music, he explained: "It's meant to have various intriguing and alluring, questioning things that you hear on first hearing.

He added: "But by its very nature it's holding a lot of other secrets or a lot of other perspectives much closer to its chest, which only with repeated hearing you start realising are there."

Born in Los Angeles on 21st December 1944, Tilson Thomas hailed from a creatively gifted family. His father, Ted, worked as a producer with New York's Mercury Theatre Company before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television.

His mother, Roberta, served as head of research for Columbia Pictures. His grandparents, Bessie and Boris Thomashefsky, were pioneers in American Yiddish theatre. He began learning piano as a child and pursued studies at the University of Southern California. By his graduation in 1967, he had already worked alongside Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Conductor Leonard Bernstein told The New York Times Magazine in a 1971 profile: "I don't fling the word genius around lightly, but I fling it around about Michael. He reminds me of me at that age, except that he knows more than I did," adding: "Not only music, but things like the functions of the brain, cerebrology, physics, biochemistry."

Tilson Thomas held positions as co-music director and subsequently music director at California's Ojai Festival throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. He served as an assistant at Germany's Bayreuth Festival in 1966, won the Koussevitzky Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1968 and assumed a position as assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1969.

His New York debut occurred at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall on 22nd October 1969, when he replaced an indisposed William Steinberg mid-concert. Tilson Thomas conducted Robert Starer's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, alongside Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel." Critic Harold C. Schonberg noted in the Times: "A tall, thin young man, he came on stage with an air of immense confidence and authority, and showed that his confidence was not misplaced," noting: "He takes naturally to this music, as might be expected of a Tanglewood graduate and a pupil of Pierre Boulez."

Tilson Thomas served as the BSO's principal guest conductor between 1972 and 1974, and held the position of music director with the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979, before taking on the role of principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985.

In 1987, he co-founded Miami's New World Symphony, where he remained as artistic director until 2021. His distinguished career also encompassed a tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1995, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020.