Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas explores the lives of his grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, through a musical performance that features five performers and the New World Symphony orchestra.

Support for the arts in America may be dwindling, but talent in our high schools isn't. Every year a group of the country's most gifted 17-year-old performing and visual artists - singled out among thousands of their peers - share a week of dreams as they learn from mentors like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Vanessa Williams, Jacques d'Amboise, Michael Tilson Thomas... and from each other. For seven transformative days, the passionate young artists revel in the support, encouragement and attention they have earned.

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

In honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Tanglewood—the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—dedicated its entire 2018 season to the iconic composer, conductor, performer, educator and humanitarian. The festivities culminated on Bernstein’s centennial birthday on August 25, 2018, in a special celebrity-studded gala concert. Directed for the stage by James Darrah, The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood illuminates the breadth of Bernstein’s incredible life and career, which inspired generations of music lovers around the globe – from his talent as a composer to his generosity in mentoring other composers and musicians, his inimitable role as a driving musical force at Tanglewood for over 50 years and more.

A celebration of the 20th anniversary of Metallica’s groundbreaking S&M concerts and album recorded with the San Francisco Symphony as legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas leads a portion of the show, kicking off his final season in San Francisco. Recorded live on September 6th and 8th.

Mahler's Symphony No.1 by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra including selected movements of the fifth, seventh and ninth symphonies and the complete Songs of a Wayfarer with baritone Thomas Hampson.

A documentary on American composer George Antheil (1900-1959) featuring excerpts from Leger's Ballet Mecanique (1924) for which Antheil wrote the music.

Peer into the world of contemporary composer John Adams with this documentary that blends performance footage with insightful interviews and commentary from his collaborators and the master himself. Highlights include performances of Adams's Grammy Award-winning operas “Nixon in China” and “El Niño” and excerpts from Penny Woolcock’s film adaptation of “The Death of Klinghoffer”. Works by Steve Reich and Conlon Nancarrow are also performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain at the Théâtre Musical de Paris-Châtelet.

How can marks on a 150‐year‐old page transform into the unflinching emotion of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony? From decoding the score, to uncovering Tchaikovsky's history, Michael Tilson Thomas gives us a backstage pass to the making of a performance.

Beethoven spent three years composing the Eroica, an intimate journal of his emotional crises and his dramatic emergence as an original master. Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony help you make sense of this voyage into life as it really is.

In 1827, Berlioz saw Harriet Smithson for the first time, playing Ophelia in a production of Hamlet. Hopelessly smitten, he turned his entire life upside down to meet her. Frantic months turned into years when he suddenly heard rumors about Harriet and another man. Believing himself cured, he wrote a ‘fantastic’ symphony complete with a special theme, the idée fixe, to represent his former obsession.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony rehearse and perform Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

The LSO’s Principal Guest Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas celebrated his 70th birthday in 2015 with a concert focusing on British and Russian music, but with a nod to his native USA. He’s joined by the sensational young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang in Gershwin’s popular Concerto. Michael Tilson Thomas gave the US premiere of Colin Matthews’ Hidden Variables, an LSO commission during Matthews’ time as an Associate Composer with the LSO.

Shostakovich may have secreted a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5. This is all the more shocking since another bad review from Stalin’s totalitarian forces could have meant a sentence to the Gulag or worse.... When he penned this fifth symphony, the composer was literally writing for his life. The risk was so high that Shostakovich slept on the stairs outside his apartment so the secret police would not wake his family when they came from him, as he was sure they would. This Keeping Score episode, investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or doom him. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in what appears to be a paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the hidden language of this masterwork. Episode includes full-length concert performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor by the San Francisco Symphony.

Bugs and Daffy perform and act out their own version of the classic "Carnival of the Animals."

MasterClass is a documentary television series airing on HBO. Each half-hour episode documents the experience of a small group of young artists working with a famous mentor. The series premiered on HBO on April 18, 2010 with opera star Plácido Domingo working with three aspiring young singers. The students in the program are chosen from participants in the Miami-based organization, YoungArts, a program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, which supports emerging artists. The series is produced and directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon of the Simon & Goodman Picture Company. The Executive Producer is Lin Arison. In July 2011 the series was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Nonfiction, Reality or Reality-Competition Program in 2011.