Michael Tilson Thomas dies, San Francisco Symphony mourns beloved leader

Davies Symphony Hall lost one of its defining architects when Michael Tilson Thomas died at home on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, surrounded by family and friends. He was 81. For San Francisco, the loss reaches beyond the concert hall. Thomas helped shape the San Francisco Symphony into one of the city’s most visible cultural institutions and became a familiar figure in the civic life of the city.

Thomas first appeared with the orchestra in 1974, when he was 29. Over the next 52 years, he led nearly 1,800 concerts with the San Francisco Symphony, a run that made him one of the most closely identified artists in the city’s musical history. He served as music director from 1995 to 2020, a 25-year tenure that expanded the orchestra’s profile through recordings, education, and programming that drew in audiences who might never have seen the symphony as part of their daily civic life.

His impact was not limited to the podium. During his years as music director, Thomas launched SFS Media, the orchestra’s recording label, which released many Grammy Award-winning recordings. He also introduced Keeping Score, a music education initiative aimed at young people, giving the Symphony a broader public role in schools and homes across the Bay Area. Those efforts helped make the orchestra feel less like an institution tucked inside the arts district and more like a citywide presence with reach well beyond traditional concertgoers.

Thomas had been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme in 2021. In early 2025, he said the cancer had returned and that he would wind down public performances. His final public conducting appearance came on April 26, 2025, at a special 80th birthday concert at Davies Symphony Hall, a venue that had become inseparable from his name. The Symphony plans to dedicate its June 18 and June 20-21, 2026 performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to him, and later hold a special concert celebrating his life and influence.

The Symphony’s board chair, Priscilla Geeslin, said Thomas brought brilliance, curiosity, and a singular voice that reshaped the orchestra and made him part of San Francisco’s cultural fabric. Beyond the Bay Area, he was a co-founder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, and a 12-time Grammy Award winner whose reach extended across American classical music. He was preceded in death by his husband, Joshua Robison.