Celebrated conductor, pianist and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, a longtime music director of the San Francisco Symphony known as a creative visionary, has died at age 81 after nearly five years with brain cancer, the orchestra announced on Thursday.

Thomas, a 12-time Grammy winner and one of the leading orchestral music figures of his generation, died at his San Francisco home on Wednesday, surrounded by family and friends, according to a statement the symphony posted on its website and Instagram.

His husband, Joshua Robison, died in February from complications following a fall.

Thomas, feted in 2019 as a Kennedy Center honoree, the highest U.S. award for achievement in the arts, underwent surgery in 2021 for a brain tumor later diagnosed as a glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of cancer.

He rallied despite the grave prognosis to conduct a number of concerts during his illness, making his final public appearance in April 2025 to lead the San Francisco Symphony for a belated celebration of his 80th birthday.

His long association with San Francisco did much to cement its place as a redoubt of the orchestral music scene.

"Michael Tilson Thomas was a visionary leader in San Francisco’s music and arts community and helped shape our entire city’s cultural identity," Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a statement, saluting him also as one of the world's first openly gay conductors.

In addition to his 25 years as music director for the San Francisco Symphony, Thomas was co-founder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, an orchestral academy that has become a major incubator for classical music talent.

'CREATIVE RISK-TAKER'

It was also a showcase for his inventive, freewheeling approach to orchestral music.

In a tribute to Thomas, widely known by his initials MTT, the New World Symphony called him a "creative risk-taker" whose "fearless explorations provided context that brought relevance, intimacy and urgency to our relationship with music."

His musical focus as a conductor spanned a wide range of composers, from Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland and Mahler, a special favorite, to more contemporary composers such as John Cage, Steve Reich and Mason Bates.

In his inaugural 1995-1996 season with the San Francisco Symphony, he collaborated with members of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead to perform music composed by Cage.

Exuberant at times in his directing style, even in his later years, Thomas lost the grip of his baton during a 2023 San Francisco performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and the stick went flying out of his hand. Unruffled, he instantly conjured a second baton, apparently from his jacket pocket or music stand, and continued leading the orchestra without missing a beat.

Born in Los Angeles to a Broadway stage manager and a middle school history teacher, Thomas was a musical prodigy who studied piano from a young age and whose paternal grandparents were stars of the Yiddish theater in Manhattan.

Graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Thomas earned a conducting fellowship at Tanglewood, a music festival in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Around that time, he also made the acquaintance of composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, who became a lifelong friend, mentor and role model, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

By his mid-20s, he had become assistant conductor, and later principal guest conductor, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and went on to conduct many of the major orchestras of the U.S. and Europe, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra, where he was principal conductor.

Thomas stepped down as music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but remained close to the orchestra as its music director laureate until his death.

-Steve Gorman and Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters