Michael Tilson Thomas.
In Tuesday’s (12/17) New York Times, David Allen writes, “ ‘I have encouraged people to color outside the lines, for lack of a better analogy,’ [conductor Michael Tilson Thomas] told The New York Times in 2017, in announcing his departure from the San Francisco Symphony after a quarter century as its lauded music director. ‘We’re not trying to reproduce the notation here. We’re trying to get back to the inspiration that caused the notations to exist.’ Coloring outside the lines has been a way of life for Thomas, who, living with a terminal glioblastoma diagnosis from 2021, will turn 80 on Saturday…. These convictions have made Thomas, affectionately known as M.T.T., a crucial part of musical life for over five decades. How has that philosophy fared on record?… If Thomas has been anything, he has been a live musician, a man of the theater whose mind has feasted on the parallels and juxtapositions that tend to be much more possible in the concert hall than in the studio…. Even so, Thomas has been a dedicated, prolific, important recording artist, as a pair of new box sets that collect much of his legacy confirm. From Sony, there comes an 80-disc compendium of recordings he made for the Columbia, Sony and RCA labels, chiefly as the music director or principal conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic (1971-79), the London Symphony (1988-95), and the San Francisco Symphony (1995-2020)…. His traits emerge with striking fidelity.”
