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. 

American violinist Hannah Tarley began playing the violin at age two. At twelve, she was appointed the youngest concertmaster in the history of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, performing with the orchestra on two European tours. She made her san Francisco Symphony debut in 2005 and returned most recently alongside Michael Tilson Thomas and Itzhak Perlman in the 2018 Opening Night Gala.

Previously a full scholarship student at the Colburn School under Robert Lipsett, Ms. Tarley received her bachelor’s degree from the Royal College of Music in London under the tutelage of Mark Messenger. She recently received her master’s degree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, and Catherine Cho. She is currently pursuing a Master of Musical Arts degree at Yale University, working with Ani Kavafian. She was a winner of Astral’s 2018 National Auditions and was third prize winner of the Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition.

Ms. Tarley has appeared as soloist with orchestras such as the Detroit Symphony, Academy of Conducting at Aspen Orchestra, and Lynn Philharmonia, and she has collaborated with leading musicians such as Itzhak Perlman, Mark Kaplan, Hsin‐Yun Huang, Nobuko Imai, Shlomo Mintz, Ray Chen, Itamar Zorman, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. As both a soloist and chamber musician, she has appeared in London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Her festival appearances have included the Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Olympic Music Festival, Kronberg Academy Masterclasses, Heifetz International Music Institute (artist-in-residence), Seiji Ozawa Academy, and Aspen Music Festival and School.  

Ms. Tarley is the Founder and Artistic Director of Notes by the Bay Music Festival, a children's summer music program in California. Now in its fifth year, the Festival presents a unique platform for kids to be imaginative, create theatrical concerts that feature poetry readings and ensemble playing, as well as perform on stage alongside their artistic mentors. She also performs with Violins of Hope, an organization that brings to life the history of the Holocaust and the stories of its victims and their violins. She will be one of the featured violinists during the organization’s Bay Area residency in 2020.

(September 2019)