Latest News
A Michael Tilson Thomas Remembrance
Posted May 18, 2026
A Michael Tilson Thomas Remembrance
by Jamie Bernstein
Photo: Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony
There were very few human beings who could keep up with Leonard Bernstein – very few who could meet him on his level: not just musically, but also in the realms of intellectual curiosity, hilarity, depth of soul, and sheer energy. Michael Tilson Thomas was that human being. They both knew it right away – and they remained warm, loving colleagues and friends all their lives.
I was just a teenager when MTT first appeared in our Connecticut house: a young, gangly, aspiring conductor who came to work with LB, stayed for dinner, and simply fit right in. The Jewish jokes alone! Our dad knew so many, and we treasured them all – but Michael arrived with so many more. His family’s connection to Yiddish Theatre gave him a deep showbiz savvy about that particular Eastern European immigrant culture – so much of which still lived on in all of us. Also, I was impressed that he was a big fan of James Brown. This was certainly not your average, nerdy, overawed conducting protégé.
Indeed, all his life Michael bristled at being called a Bernstein protégé. He wanted to be his own person – and it’s to his credit that he completely succeeded in doing exactly that.
Still, that cross-generational bond between the two musicians was profound. Not only did Michael study conducting with LB, beginning at Tanglewood; they continued to meet whenever and however they could, to study scores together and discuss all manner of weighty topics. And sometimes perform together. And always, to share more jokes.
In the spring of 1990, LB’s final year, Michael was with him in Sapporo, Japan, to launch the Pacific Music Festival – Bernstein’s final, highly ambitious educational project. Michael’s energy, focus, and good humor helped his ailing, beloved Lenny get through those difficult, strenuous days. Just a few months later, Michael went to visit him in New York. Lenny was very sick. He despaired of his weakening condition, when he still had so much he wanted to do with music and teaching. “Cut down at the peak of his decline,” Michael said, eliciting one of my dad’s last guffaws. He died the next day.
By then, Michael and I were close friends in our own right. We’d had lots of adventures: after-hours disco dancing in SoHo; hiking in Monument Valley; twirling down the San Juan River on inner tubes. Michael was the first visitor to my first New York City apartment. He took one look in my empty refrigerator and declared, “Jamie, you’re a disgrace to your race!” – and then frog-marched me to Gristedes to buy groceries. He was a terrific cook (such a chicken soup!), with a deep appreciation for fresh produce. Years later, I happily watched him glow over the artichokes he’d grown in the garden of his getaway home in Bolinas, CA.
In the early 2000’s, I visited Michael and his not-yet-husband Joshua Robison in their apartment in a tacky high-rise in Miami Beach – of all the unlikely domiciles for someone with a penchant for Navajo rugs and Mission furniture. But the digs were temporary: Michael was at the beginning phase of his remarkable journey with the New World Symphony, the orchestral academy he founded down there. Tanglewood and the Pacific Music Festival were clearly inspirations. Just like my dad, Michael was a born teacher, with a keen sense of how important it was to pass knowledge and spirit along. Over the next years, the NWS grew and thrived, eventually moving into its own spectacular home, the New World Center, designed by Frank Gehry – whose lifelong connection with Michael began decades earlier in LA, when Frank was his babysitter!
In 2010, Michael invited me to develop an educational concert series for the NWS: hourlong, user-friendly presentations designed to draw in adults who were not necessarily in the habit of concert-going. I designed, wrote, and narrated two of them per year, for seven seasons. Michael took a big chance on me; it was a daunting assignment. But the experience was tremendous; it helped me grow as a writer and as a presenter. I loved every minute of my time down there, working with the New World Symphony’s devoted staff, and surrounded by all those gifted young musicians. My concert series was just one of countless ways Michael and his team devised to make music accessible and fun for everyone – including the “Wallcasts:” video of the goings-on inside the hall, projected onto the exterior wall of the building. Viewers were invited to sit on the grass, and bring picnics. When I first visited the New World Center, the bougainvillea on their trellises around that lawn were mere wisps; today, the trellises are invisible beneath their lush floral canopies.
Photo: Jamie, bottom left, hosting an Encounters Concert in 2012, courtesy of the New World Symphony.
The only flaw in the design was that Michael was hardly ever there when I was; he was very busy with his other life in San Francisco conducting that orchestra, as well as traveling the world to work with so many other ensembles. But on the occasions when we overlapped down there, I delighted in visiting Michael and Joshua, who by 2014 were – hurrah – a legally married couple, and had settled into a beautiful house, right on the bay. And the poodles! Shayna, Maydele, and more as the years passed: a rambunctious procession of wonderful dogs, every bit as soulful as their owners.
On one of my visits, it happened to be Passover. Incredibly, I found myself at the dinner table with Michael, Joshua, and their dear friend Lin Arison: just the four of us, improvising an informal little seder. I was well into my 60’s – yet as the youngest person at the table, it fell to me to recite the Four Questions. Goofiest seder ever!
There is not enough space in here to say enough about Joshua Robison, whom we lost precisely two months before Michael. It was entirely against nature that Joshua -- the most vibrant, athletic, capable, huge-hearted human imaginable – suffered a terrible fall that led to several agonizing months before his body gave in. For the past four years, Joshua had been taking exquisite care of Michael, who was dealing with his own advancing illness. As MTT’s longtime manager, Joshua helped Michael achieve an extraordinary last round of triumphant concerts – and he also made sure all of MTT’s career-related affairs were perfectly in order. As his loving husband, Joshua made sure that every day Michael had left would be full of care, friends, good food, and boundless love. No one imagined that Joshua would leave this planet first. The double loss has been staggering for those that knew and loved them both.
Photo: Joshua Robeson, Jamie Bernstein, and Michael Tilson Thomas, courtesy of Jamie Bernstein.
I flew out to San Francisco last fall to see Joshua in the rehab hospital. It was a short visit; his body wasn’t obeying mental orders, but his mind and Joshuaness were all there. That evening I had dinner at the house on Pierce Street, with Michael and their forever friend Mark Leno, who had moved in to keep Michael company until Joshua could get back. (Joshua never did get back.)
Michael was still quite lively and conversational at that time; the three of us had a sweet dinner together at the kitchen table. Afterwards, Michael wandered to the piano in the living room. I no longer remember exactly how this happened, but I sat at the piano and played Michael my favorite childhood piece, “Contrary Motion,” from the Bela Bartok Mikrokosmos book that I’d studied at age eight. I never forgot that little piece, because it was so nifty: the fingers of each hand moving in opposite directions making a stern, modal statement until that one, crucial, structural “error” that makes the whole piece pay off. After all these non-playing years, I could still play this tiny piece. “That’s good,” Michael said, then he sat down at the piano and played another contrary motion piece, but far more sophisticated and intricate: truly marvelous. I’d never heard it before. “What is that?” I asked him. “Who wrote – wait a minute: did you just make that up?” Yes, he had. And where was anyone’s phone to catch this astonishing moment? Not there, alas.
Michael the composer could still express himself -- so strong was that impulse. His conducting schedule had never given him enough time to compose (yet another parallel with LB), but he managed to write many wonderful pieces. When my father turned 70, Michael presented him with a song called “Grace.” I loved this song the moment I heard it, and I always remembered its opening lines. Two years ago, while Michael was struggling with his failing health, Joshua arranged (of course he did) to have the song recorded by soprano Sasha Cooke, accompanied by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. The webpage about the song shows a photo of Michael and my father in a tender hug. The song affectionately mentions “Lenny,” and slips in a sly musical wink at him. The combination of photo and song made me realize that Michael had truly sailed past any protégé-related concerns; he was free, and his heart was full.
Those opening lines of “Grace” -- the ones that have stayed with me since I first heard them in 1988 -- contain so much of Michael: his musicality, his spirituality, his love of food and people, his innate wit, his appreciation for both the elegant and the plain. It’s all right there:
Thanks to whoever is there
For this tasty plate of herring!
May I suggest that you give yourself five minutes today, to listen to Michael’s beautiful song while reading his lyrics. It feels for all the world like a message in a bottle that Michael – and Joshua -- left for every one of us.