“Michael Tilson Thomas, the longtime former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, was diagnosed late last month with a brain tumor that required an immediate operation,” writes Joshua Kosman in Friday’s (8/6) San Francisco Chronicle. “The surgery, which took place during the last week of July at UCSF Medical Center, was successful, the orchestra announced on Friday, Aug. 6. Thomas, 76, will now embark on a monthslong course of therapy and has canceled all his public appearances through the end of October…. The announcement from the Symphony said that Thomas is under the care of the UCSF medical team…. His first appearances in San Francisco [as San Francisco Symphony’s music director laureate], beginning Nov. 12, are still on the books. Thomas has, however, withdrawn from scheduled performances with the New World Symphony, the Miami training orchestra that he founded and directed, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” Thomas’s husband, Joshua Robison, said, “Michael continues to be the witty, sharp-tongued, affectionate and brilliant person I’ve known all his life. But he is now looking at life from a new perspective, and looking at time in a much different way.”
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