Michael Tilson Thomas is a composer of American music. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, but his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was a toddler. His father, Frank Tilson, was a prominent violinist who worked with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra from 1936 to 1968. Michael began his musical studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age ten and graduated from there in 1965
He then attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years, and then completed his graduate studies in 1966 and 1967 at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), with Harry Partch and Charles Wuorinen as his instructors. At UCLA, he met and married his wife, Felicia. After completing his studies, Michael returned to San Francisco and began teaching composition at San Francisco State University in 1968. In 1971 he became composer-in-residence for NBC's The Today Show; he worked there until 1982.
He also wrote music for television programs such as Mr. Belvedere, The Odd Couple, and an episode of Columbo entitled "Revenge," among others. He won two Emmy Awards and several Golden Globe awards for his work on Columbo. In 1976 he began working with David Milch on the radio program L.A.
Law; after its cancellation in 1982, Michael continued to work with Milch on ABC's NYPD Blue until Milch's death in 2002. He also composed music for such television programs as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Remington Steele, Homicide: Life on the Street, Murder She Wrote, ER ((19th episodes)), The West Wing (all five seasons), 24 (five episodes), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2 episodes), Walker Texas Ranger (two episodes) , Las Vegas (two episodes).
He also wrote The Tango Lesson which won an Emmy Award in 1995 for outstanding original dramatic score for a miniseries or movie based on a book written by another author or an adaptation of an existing work of fiction or nonfiction . He served as composer-in-residence at Stanford University from 1995 through 2007 for its "Celebration of American Music" concert series, directing orchestras that included The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra , among others . For many years he lived in Palo Alto , California , where he was chair of the composition department at Stanford University from 1998 to 2007 . From 2002 through 2010 he was co
But if I can be convinced and then through the work that we do together, the orchestra can really be convinced of the big sweep of that communication that the piece suggests, then the audience will get it and it will be a good experience for all of us.Michael Tilson Thomas
But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.Michael Tilson Thomas
