Losing MTT

VAHAN STEPANYAN

When Michael Tilson Thomas left us, the finality of his death came as a shock even though we had had years to prepare for it, the bitter irony of his brilliant mind succumbing to brain cancer almost too heavy to bear.

I first met Michael at a conducting workshop he hosted with the Buffalo Philharmonic. I was an insecure fledgling conductor, and he was the first major musician to encourage me, albeit in a roundabout manner. I had just conducted Strauss’ Til Eulenspiegel, a piece I had absolutely no business attempting. Michael’s feedback began: “Mr. Loebel, you do some things that are very good and you do some things that DRIVE ME CRAZY!!” I didn’t doubt the second half of that sentence, but the first half sustained me for a very long time. 

ART STREIBER

Over the years, Michael dropped into my life at irregular intervals in surprising ways. For instance, a few years after that Buffalo workshop, he called me out of the blue because a mutual friend had told him that I’d unearthed some previously unknown fact about Gershwin; of course I hadn’t, but listening to him then expound about his beloved George was a joy. When I participated in Carnegie Hall’s Pierre Boulez Workshop (see “Why Do You Give Two Beats?” elsewhere in Unsolicited Advice) Michael suddenly materialized at intermission, leaving me with some alternately encouraging and mildly critical suggestions. Our numerous conversations on topics large and small in Miami, San Francisco, Cleveland, Boston and elsewhere were always memorable. 

When Michael called to ask me to join the team at the New World Symphony, I was in—of all places-- Buffalo, substituting with the Philharmonic on short notice. I reminded him of the “drive me crazy” comment that he had uttered the last time I was in Kleinhans Music Hall; with childlike innocence he replied, “I said THAT???” The big piece in Buffalo that week was Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony; in an eerie coincidence, I was conducting that very same piece at New England Conservatory on the day Michael died.

Like Leonard Bernstein--to whom he was inevitably compared—it is impossible to imagine anyone else with Michael’s amazing mix of musical genius, intelligence, pedagogical gifts, rollicking sense of humor, boundless enthusiasm, and buoyant yet complex personality. The brash, youthful arrogance that had characterized his meteoric ascent in the 1970s diminished in later decades as he became a Grand Old Man. But even on those occasions when it would resurface, we forgave him everything because he was The Real Deal, a genuine, inspiring servant of music and a big-hearted mensch. 

What a privilege and a blessing it was to have known him.

April 2026