'It's a wrap,' he said after final concert in 2025

Famed Jewish conductor Michael Tilson Thomas dies at 81

LA-born Tilson Thomas, the scion of Yiddish theater royalty, conducted a wide range of symphonies around the world, including in Israel; died of brain cancer

JTA — One year ago, Michael Tilson Thomas lifted his baton to conduct a concert in San Francisco that he said would be his last.

The scion of Yiddish theater and luminary of contemporary classical music had been diagnosed with a recurrence of brain cancer, and he knew his days were numbered.

“We all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap,’” he said on his website after conducting Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with the San Francisco Symphony, one of several orchestras he led during his storied career. He signed off: “Life is precious.”

Thomas died Wednesday at his home in San Francisco, four days short of the one-year anniversary of that concert. He was 81.

Among the many paying tribute to Thomas were those whose appreciation stretched back through his long career to his family roots in the thriving Yiddish theater scene of early 20th-century America.

“The grandson of Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashevsky, Michael was born and raised in Los Angeles and made incalculable contributions, not only to the music world, but through performances, recordings and curation documenting his grandparents’ musical legacy,” said UCLA’s Milken Archive of Jewish Music. “May his memory be a blessing.”

Born in 1944 in Los Angeles, Thomas showed both promise in and devotion to classical music from an early age. After graduating from the University of Southern California, he conducted a wide range of symphonies around the world, including in Israel, and became known as an ambassador for classical music to the masses.

He grew most associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he became assistant conductor in 1968, the San Francisco Symphony, and the New World Symphony in Miami, which he launched in 1987, with the help of the Israeli businessman Ted Arison, to aid young musicians.

Thomas’ career suffered a setback after he was arrested in 1978 and charged with carrying drugs into the country from London.

“People found out I was not the model of a nice Jewish boy,” he told the New York Times Magazine in 1995. “The event pushed me from wunderkind to desperado. It hurt, and I probably did not get some jobs I might have gotten, but hurt is important and instructive for a musician.”

Despite the incident, Thomas continued touring and racking up roles, as well as recording albums. He earned 11 Grammys for recordings of orchestras he conducted.

In the course of his career, Tilson Thomas embraced his Jewish roots and identity through a diverse array of compositions, including “From the Diary of Anne Frank,” commissioned in 1969 by UNICEF for the actress Audrey Hepburn.

In 2018, he composed and conducted “Grace,” an 80th-birthday tribute to his mentor and colleague, Leonard Bernstein, another Jewish wunderkind to whom he was often compared. He conducted the narrated piece with the BSO at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts.

Thomas’ most well-known project with Jewish themes is “The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater.” It’s an homage to his immigrant grandparents, Boris and Bessie, who, in the early years of the 20th century, became trailblazing performers and producers of Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side.

“My grandparents became megastars in their new country. The Yiddish theatre was central to their lives,” Tilson Thomas wrote. “The Thomashefskys,” performed internationally, expressed Tilson Thomas’s pride in his Jewish roots, according to Joshua Jacobson, founder and artistic director of Zamir Chorale of Boston and a scholar of Jewish music.

“He wasn’t hiding the fact that he is Jewish. In fact, he was doing programs about it,” Jacobson said.

Thomas was preceded in death by his husband Joshua Robison, whom he met in a middle school orchestra program. The two became a couple in 1976 and were married in 2014. Robison died in February after a fall. He is also survived by his sister and nieces and nephews, according to a statement from his family.