The San Francisco Symphony announced Wednesday that there will be a memorial concert in October to honor the late Michael Tilson Thomas, who served as music director of the orchestra for a quarter century.<\/p>\n
“A Concert for MTT” will happen at Davies Symphony Hall on October 2 at 7:30 pm, and the SF Symphony has invited several notable guests to perform in honor of Michael Tilson Thomas and his storied music career.<\/p>\n
“Through a mix of personal tributes and anecdotes, archival footage and recordings, and performances of iconic repertoire, ‘A Concert for MTT’ celebrates the breadth of Michael Tilson Thomas\u2019s musical imagination, passion for artistic discovery, and the profound relationships he cultivated throughout his extraordinary career,” the Symphony said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The concert will feature performances by several musicians and singers who were favorite friends and collaborators of Thomas, including classically trained Broadway superstar Audra McDonald, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Yuja Wang.<\/p>\n
The concert will be conducted by Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater.<\/p>\n
SF Symphony donors and subscribers had first access to tickets<\/a> as of Thursday morning, and tickets go on sale to the general public on July 18.<\/p>\n “Michael didn\u2019t just lead this orchestra. He reimagined what an orchestra could be, and he did it here, with these musicians, for this city,” says SF Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey in a statement. “Working alongside him shaped how all of us understand our purpose.”<\/p>\n The program for the memorial concert is still to be announced.<\/p>\n Thomas passed away in April at age 81<\/a> after several years fighting an aggressive brain cancer. Not long after announcing the cancer had returned in early 2025, Thomas conducted his final concert<\/a> with the Symphony in April 2025, in celebration of his 80th birthday.<\/p>\n Following the departure of his successor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, the SF Symphony announced in May<\/a> that the next artistic director will be Hong Kong-born Elim Chan, the first woman to lead the orchestra in its history. Following a welcome concert<\/a> conducted by Chan last month, she will return to conduct again in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Symphony announced Wednesday that there will be a memorial concert in October to honor the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-385225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}