Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and cofounder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He is a 12-time Grammy Award winner and has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.

Born in Los Angeles, he studied conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and as a young musician worked with artists including Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. In his mid-20s, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony.

In 1987 he cofounded the New World Symphony, a postgraduate orchestral academy in Miami Beach dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music. He has worked with more than 1,200 NWS fellows, many of whom have gone on to major musical careers.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, ushering in a period of significant growht and heightened international recognition for the orchestra. He led the Symphony in championing contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters, and as Music Director Laureate, he has returned to conduct the orchestra each season. 

His discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes series for the BBC and PBS, the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, and numerous televised performances. “Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is” aired on PBS’s American Masters series in fall 2020.

Throughout his career, he has been an active composer, with major works including From the Diary of Anne Frank, premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke. Both appear on SFS Media’s Grammy Award-winning recording of his music. In 2023, Yuja Wang released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon which included his You Come Here Often?
He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree.

Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone; The Complete Columbia, CBS, and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical; and Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence. 

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1973 at the request of Seiji Ozawa, then the Symphony’s Music Director; the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, numbering thirty-two professional and more than 120 volunteer members, performs more than twenty-six concerts each season. Louis Magor served as the Chorus’s director during its first decade. In 1982 Margaret Hillis assumed the ensemble’s leadership, and the following year Vance George was named Chorus Director, serving through 2005-06. Ragnar Bohlin assumed the position of Chorus Director in March 2007. The Chorus can be heard on many acclaimed recordings, including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 8 (with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting), choral works of Brahms, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, Stravinsky’s Perséphone, selections from Berlioz’s Lélio, and John Adams’s Harmonium. The ensemble has received Grammy awards for Best Performance of a Choral Work (for Orff’s Carmina burana, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8) and Best Classical Album (for a collection of Stravinsky’s music including Perséphone, The Firebird, and Le Sacre du printemps; and for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 8).

Ragnar Bohlin began his tenure as SFS Chorus Director in 2007. Mr. Bohlin served as choirmaster of Stockholm’s Maria Magdalena Church and holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. He studied conducting with Eric Ericson and Jorma Panula, piano with Peter Feuchtwanger in London, singing with Nicolai Gedda, and through a Sweden-America Foundation scholarship he visited choruses throughout the US. With Stockholm’s KFUM Chamber Choir, the Maria Magdalena Motet Choir, and the Maria Vocal Ensemble, Mr. Bohlin has won numerous prizes in international competitions. Currently teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has also taught at the Royal Academy in Stockholm and been a visiting professor at Indiana University and Miami University. With the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, he has conducted Handel’s Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina burana, and J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, and B minor Mass. Mr. Bohlin’s guest conducting engagements have included appearances with the São Paulo Symphony in Brazil, Malmö Symphony in Sweden, Stavanger Symphony in Norway, the Edmonton Symphony in Canada, and the Ericson Chamber Choir in Mozart’s C minor Mass. In 2018 he leads the BBC Singers and Swedish Radio Choir. Mr. Bohlin is the founding Artistic Director of the professional chamber choir Cappella SF; the group has released three recordings on the Delos label. He recently received Chorus America’s Michael Korn Founders Award.

(September 2018)

A first-year Adler Fellow of Samoan descent, tenor Amitai Pati made his San Francisco Opera debut in 2016 as Matteo Borsa in Rigoletto and most recently appeared as Gastone in La Traviata. He was a participant in the 2016 Merola Opera Program, where he performed his first principal role as Ferrando in Così fan tutte. He was also a participant at the 2014 Young Singers Project in Salzburg. He won the Lexus SongQuest in 2012 and the Waiariki Institute of Technology New Zealand Aria competition in 2015. Mr. Pati, along with his brother, tenor Pene Pati, and their cousin, baritone Moses Mackay, comprise the New Zealand vocal trio Sol3 Mio, which mixes both classical and contemporary music. 

(November 2017)

Bass-baritone Philip Skinner graduated from Northwestern University and received his master’s degree and Performance Certificate from Indiana University. Mr. Skinner has recently performed with the Metropolitan Opera in Cyrano de Bergerac, Opera Parallèle in Jonathan Dove’s Flight, the Pacific Symphony in Aïda, and Charlottesville Opera in Allen Shearer’s Middlemarch in Spring. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1989.

Mr. Skinner’s long association with San Francisco Opera began in 1985 and he has given more than 380 performances in fifty-five productions with the company. His international credits include Rigotetto with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, The Tales of Hoffman with the Victoria State Opera in Melbourne, The Magic Flute with Vancouver Opera, and Salome with La Monnaie in Brussels. He also performed with the Houston Grand Opera in The Marriage of Figaro and the Four Villains.

In the concert hall, Mr. Skinner has performed the Verdi Requiem at Carnegie Hall with the Masterworks Chorale, and in Europe with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. He sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Hollywood Bowl, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, and Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, and other concert pieces with ensembles including the Düsseldorf Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and others. 

(November 2017)