# Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has died at 81 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** celebrity-death\ **Created:** [April 23, 2026, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-has-died-at-81/1029522 "2026-04-23T22:57:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2026, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-has-died-at-81/1029522/1 "2026-04-23T22:57:36Z")
> **[Michael Tilson Thomas, renowned conductor and composer, dies at 81](https://apnews.com/article/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-dies-605d6386990b6e0be24322df99b02385)** > > Renowned American conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas has died at 81. His spokesperson Connie Shuman says Tilson Thomas died Wednesday night. Okay, maybe this won’t be a big deal to all that many people on this board or elsewhere… but I followed Thomas’s whole career because he was only four years older than me. I was like watching that kid in the class ahead of you make it big. And I always thought of him as a kid. So sue me. I remember vividly when Thomas was a prodigy, a wunderkind. His mentor Leonard Bernstein said of him: > “I don’t fling the word genius around lightly, but I fling it around about Michael. He reminds me of me at that age, except that he knows more than I did,” conductor Leonard Bernstein told The New York Times Magazine for a 1971 profile. Thomas’s career was launched in a way similar to Bernstein’s: > Tilson Thomas made his New York debut at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall on Oct. 22, 1969, as a mid-concert replacement for an ailing William Steinberg. He had a long and successful career and died of a glioblastoma brain tumor (like my late daughter-in-law). It was a shock to me to see that someone I always followed and thought of as a kid had died as a Grand Old Man of the music world. I guess it’s like with me and my friends, “When did we get old?” This is the face I remember: [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/01/obituaries/00Thomas-1960s/00Thomas-1960s-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp) ](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/01/obituaries/00Thomas-1960s/00Thomas-1960s-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp) ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2026, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-has-died-at-81/1029522/2 "2026-04-23T23:00:41Z")
RIP. I’ll always enjoy his performance in _Bugs and Daffy’s Carnival of the Animals_: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mEG67EC-X8g/hqdefault.jpg "Bugs Bunny Ep 184 Bugs And Daffy's Carnival Of The Animas") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEG67EC-X8g) ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2026, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-has-died-at-81/1029522/3 "2026-04-24T00:04:19Z")
He was the conductor of the SF Symphony for 25 years, 1995 to 2020, and I didn’t see him once. My loss, but I hate going to concerts. I’ve listened to a lot of his recordings, mostly on my local FM listener-financed classical music station, KDFC-FM. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2026, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conductor-michael-tilson-thomas-has-died-at-81/1029522/4 "2026-04-24T20:18:40Z")
My mother was in the Los Angeles Master Chorale a million years ago, and they called him the Boy Wonder.