Michael Tilson Thomas - Quotations

Conductor, born in Hollywood, California, USA. A precocious talent, he was thrust into fame at 25 when as an assistant he took over a concert of the Boston Symphony from ailing William Steinberg. He went on to guest-conduct widely, and led the Buffalo Philharmonic (1971–9) and the London Symphony Orchestra (1988–95), becoming music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1995.

Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944), nicknamed MTT, is an American conductor, pianist and composer.

He was born in Los Angeles, California, where he studied at the University of Southern California under Ingolf Dahl among others. As a student of Friedlinde Wagner, Michael Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival.

From 1981 to 1985 he was principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1988 to 1995 he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, becoming principal guest conductor thereafter.

Tilson Thomas has conducted a wide variety of music, and is a particular champion of modern American works, recording the complete symphonies of Charles Ives and the premiere recording of Steve Reich's The Desert Music. Reich's composition The Four Sections was actually commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony and dedicated to Thomas. Thomas premiered the piece in San Francisco and later recorded the piece for Nonesuch with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Michael Tilson Thomas hosts the Keeping Score television series, three one-hour documentary-style episodes and two live-concert programs which began airing nationally on PBS stations in early November 2006. They have been compared to Leonard Bernstein’s Young People's Concerts which aired in the 1960s.1

In April 2005 he conducted the Carnegie Hall premiere of Remembrances of Thomashefsky's Yiddish Theater. NPR story

Quotations

(In response to an interviewer's question as to why Michael Tilson Thomas did not list Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven among his favorite composers): "You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers: They simply define what music is!"