Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor, composer and pianist who led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years and became one of the most celebrated figures in American classical music, died on April 22, 2026 at his home in San Francisco.
He was 81.
The cause was glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer he had lived with publicly since 2021. He was surrounded by family and friends.
He was preceded in death by his husband of nearly four decades, Joshua Robison, who died on February 22, 2026. He is survived by his sisters-in-law, flutist Paula Robison and Deborah Robison, and by a recording legacy of more than 120 albums, 12 Grammy Awards, and the New World Symphony, the Miami Beach orchestral academy he co-founded in 1987.
It remains one of the most important training institutions for young professional musicians in the world.
Who Was Michael Tilson Thomas?
Michael Tilson Thomas was born on December 21, 1944 in Los Angeles, the son of Ted Thomas, a Broadway stage manager who later worked in film and television, and Roberta Thomas, a middle school history teacher.
His father was born Theodor Herzl Tomashefsky, the family had shortened the name, and the theatrical lineage ran deep. MTT’s grandparents were Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the reigning stars of New York’s Yiddish theater in the early 20th century.
His great-grandfather Pincus was an actor and playwright. Before that came a long line of cantors. The stage, in other words, was in his bones before he ever raised a baton.
He became a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and the influence was evident throughout his career, in his theatrical presence on the podium, in the way he communicated music to audiences as though he were sharing a private discovery, in his willingness to program adventurously.
He became assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at 24, in 1969, in circumstances that became part of American music legend. He stepped in for an ailing William Steinberg on short notice, and what followed launched his career.
In 1971 he became music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a post he held until 1979.
He also served as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, where he later held the honorary title of Conductor Laureate.
In 1990, Time magazine wrote of him: “Among American conductors, none is more talented or adventurous. Among the world’s best, he ranks in the top dozen.” He was 45 years old.
25 Years In San Francisco
When Tilson Thomas was named music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, the announcement generated a response that longtime San Francisco arts publicist Jon Finck still remembers vividly.
Banners bearing Thomas’s face hung around the city. His first concert was sold out. “Screaming, yelling, cheering like he was the messiah,” Finck recalled of the audience.
He stayed for 25 years, longer than any other music director in the symphony’s history. What he built in that time was not simply a good orchestra.
He built a world-class one, distinguished by technical polish, ambitious programming and a cultural footprint that extended well beyond the concert hall. His focus on American composers, particularly contemporary ones, gave the San Francisco Symphony a distinctive identity.
His Mahler interpretations drew international attention. Under his leadership the orchestra received glowing coverage not just in classical music outlets but in the New York Times, NPR and Rolling Stone.
He also built institutions. He helped create SFS Media, the first record label owned by a major American orchestra.
He created and hosted a five-part PBS series in partnership with the Symphony. He co-created the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the first collaborative online orchestra in history, featuring musicians from 30 countries.
He remained the orchestra’s Music Director Laureate after his tenure ended in 2020.
Former SF Symphony President Sakurako Fisher said that Thomas and his husband “together changed the way we see classical music in San Francisco, as they wove themselves and their passions into the fabric of our city.”
Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey called him “a brilliant conductor, a generous teacher, and a deeply original human being.”
Board Chair Priscilla Geeslin recalled her reaction to his appointment, “a feeling of pure exhilaration, as though something extraordinary had just been set in motion.”
The New World Symphony
Alongside his San Francisco work, Thomas co-founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach in 1987.
The NWS is a training orchestra, a fellowship program for musicians who have recently graduated from top conservatories but are not yet ready for permanent positions in major orchestras.
It became one of the most important institutions of its kind in the world, and Thomas served as its artistic director until 2022.
He was also instrumental in creating the New World Center, the NWS’s home, a Frank Gehry-designed campus that opened in 2011 in Miami Beach and is considered one of the great contemporary concert hall buildings in America.
Thomas’ Battle With Cancer And His Final Concert
On August 6, 2021, Thomas publicly disclosed for the first time that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme.
He underwent brain surgery to remove the tumor and continued conducting. His return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in January 2022, his first appearance since the cancer disclosure, was met with warmth by an audience that knew what his presence on the podium meant.
In February 2025, he announced that the tumor had returned. The treatment options existed, he wrote, but “the odds are uncertain.”
He planned a small number of final performances and wrote with characteristic clarity about what was coming, “At that point, we all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap.'”
His last public performance was on April 26, 2025, a belated 80th birthday celebration concert with the San Francisco Symphony.
He was assisted onto the stage by his husband Joshua. The program included Respighi’s four-part “Roman Festivals.” Mezzo-soprano Federica von Stade and Broadway star Jessica Vosk performed tributes.
At the end, hundreds of balloons in Thomas’s signature blue rained down from the ceiling as the audience, many of them in tears, gave him his final standing ovation.
There was an after-party at the concert hall, blue-frosted cupcakes, friends and colleagues who had traveled to say goodbye, the accumulated warmth of a city that understood what it was watching.
Joshua Robison died on February 22, 2026, less than a year after standing at his husband’s side on that stage.
The two had met as childhood friends and became life partners in 1976. Joshua was not only Thomas’s husband but his business partner and manager for decades.
They married in 2014. Michael Tilson Thomas died two months after Joshua, on April 22, 2026.
Longtime friend Orville Schell captured what the world had been losing, slowly, over those years of illness.
Watching Thomas’s decline, he said, “was like some great library being burned, all this music within him would be gone.”
The music is in the recordings now. More than 120 of them. Twelve Grammy Awards.
The New World Symphony in Miami Beach, still training the next generation of musicians as he designed it to do.
The memory of what it sounded like when a conductor arrived in a city and made people feel, for the first time, that something extraordinary had just been set in motion.
