Michael Tilson Thomas, one of the most galvanizing figures in American classical music, died Wednesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 81. The San Francisco Symphony confirmed that Thomas, known universally as MTT, passed away surrounded by family and friends, succumbing to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer he’d been fighting since 2021. His final public appearance was a concert celebrating his 80th birthday in April 2025.
The scope of his career was staggering. A protege of Leonard Bernstein, Thomas served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years beginning in 1995, transforming the orchestra into one of the most innovative ensembles in the world. Before San Francisco, he held principal positions with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Buffalo Philharmonic, and conducted virtually every major orchestra on the planet. His 12 Grammy Awards documented a discography of more than 120 recordings, with his Mahler cycle for SFS Media standing as a particular landmark.
Thomas was also a builder. In 1987, he co-founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, a postgraduate orchestral academy that trained more than 1,200 fellows over 35 years and transformed South Florida’s cultural landscape. The academy’s Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, which opened in 2011, was Thomas’s vision made permanent. As an educator he had no peer in classical music since Bernstein himself, with his “Keeping Score” television series reaching audiences far beyond the concert hall.
“A ‘coda’ is a musical element at the end of a composition that brings the whole piece to a conclusion,” Thomas said last year when he announced his public appearances would wind down. “My life’s coda is generous and rich.” He is survived by no immediate family. His husband and manager Joshua Robison died in February 2026.