Michael Tilson Thomas, a leading American conductor for a half-century who headed orchestras in Buffalo, Miami, London and San Francisco while also composing, died Wednesday. He was 81.
Tilson Thomas had surgery for a brain tumor in 2021 and resumed his career, then said in February 2025 the tumor had returned.
He conducted his final concert with the San Francisco Symphony in April 2025 and died at his home in San Francisco, spokesperson Connie Shuman said.
Tilson Thomas received 39 Grammy Award nominations, winning 12, and was among the Kennedy Center Honors recipients in 2019.
“It’s meant to have various intriguing and alluring, questioning things that you hear on first hearing,” he said of classical music during a 2004 interview with The Associated Press. “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 realizing are
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