“We are so lucky in music that we can look back to someone like Beethoven or Monteverdi or Josquin des Prez and understand through their music many different qualities of how people imagined themselves to be, how they imagined life to be. Despite the fact that we’re having this lovely conversation, the acronym of my life has become AFWAP— 'as few words as possible.' That is my new ideal that I hope to realize a bit more fully until…I’m outta here."
Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) is here, one of the most celebrated American musicians of the past half century. In this wide-ranging look into the thinking of this fascinating figure, MTT and Daniel discuss everything from the very fundamentals of music -- "sad" chords and "happy" chords, how harmony is like flavor such as when one adds one drop of sesame oil to a soup -- to MTT's work with such legendary figures as Jascha Heifetz, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Far from being a standard interview, here MTT and Daniel take a deep dive into Mozart, the ever-elusive Wunderkind that can be so difficult for players to grasp. MTT also expresses his love for working with young, promising musicians, and how after all these years in music, patterns, in all sorts of ways, become more evident. As he says at the end, "music keeps your spirit alive in a very wonderful way." With MTT seated at his keyboard, we are treated to unexpected musical examples as he illustrates the power of a turn of phrase.
Conductor, composer, and educator Michael Tilson Thomas is Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. In June 2020, he completed a remarkable 25-year tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, becoming the Orchestra’s first Music Director Laureate.His television credits include the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts and Keeping Score on PBS-TV, which he and the San Francisco Symphony launched in 2004. His compositions include From the Diary of Anne Frank and Meditations on Rilke, both recorded with the SF Symphony and released on SFS Media in June 2020; Shówa/Shoáh; settings of poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman; Island Music; Notturno; and Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. Tilson Thomas is a 2019 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, was Musical America’s Musician and Conductor of the Year, and was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was inducted in the California Hall of Fame, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. Tilson Thomas was named an Officier in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in June 2020, recognizing his continued contributions to global culture and the vast impact of his 25 years as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. For more information, visit michaeltilsonthomas.com.
