This season, Michael Tilson Thomas has become the music director of the San Francisco Symphony. After decades of global guest conducting, after seven years with the London Symphony Orchestra–an organization he helped bring hack from artistic and near financial ruin–he has come home. For years, Tilson Thomas didn’t seem to live up to advance billing as the next Leonard Bernstein, a label that would have flattened anyone else. He confounded critics by refusing to specialize and create a niche for himself. He didn’t land a major American orchestra directorship, for reasons that still aren’t clear: was he too abrasive, or not political enough? But now, record collectors and British audiences know what others may not: that Tilson Thomas has become a great conductor, able to convince listeners of his take on even the gluiest old warhorse. With him, the San Francisco Symphony could move to the very front ranks of American orchestras.

You can see him everywhere in the city: on huge billboards that blare MTT, in full-page welcome ads in the local papers. You might even see him in person, tall and lean in black jeans, with a hawklike nose he has finally grown into, walking down the street, singing. One recent day he segued from vocalizing bits of Beethoven’s Ninth to a Smokey Robinson tune to a medieval French song; on another day, Gershwin’s “How Long Has This Been Going On?” led seamlessly into a 16th-century motet. “My mind is constantly making these connections between centuries and style,” he says. He has recorded with Sarah Vaughn and played organ for James Brown in his “Sex Machine” days. (“It was only a couple of notes. I was just pleased that he’d let me be there.”) A friend says MTT stands for Musical Time Traveler, and Tilson Thomas agrees. “That’s what I kind of am, that’s what music is to me.”

That attitude is reflected in his programming, which may look eclectic but is, in fact, logical. One SFS concert includes suites by 17th-century French composer Jean Joseph Mouret, the Brahms violin concerto and the eighth symphony of America’s William Schuman. The link? “It’s three pieces in D, three different concepts of D major.” His programs usually include something American. On opening night, there was a premiere by Bay Area composer Lou Harrison. “This was a sign to say, “This repertory is going to be here now. It’s part of our town and our heritage and we must reclaim it’.”

Americans still have an unaccountable inferiority complex about homegrown conductors. As one St. Louis player put it, “most managements would rather hire a second-rate European conductor than a first-rate American one.” Still, it’s surprising an appointment like the San Francisco one was so long in coming to MTT. He grew up in Los Angeles, where his mother taught junior high and his father worked, unlucratively, in the movie business. They hoped their only child would go into science, but he said, “No, I have to make music.” At the University of Southern California (he graduated summa cum laude), he accompanied cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and violinist Jascha Heifetz. He played for Igor Stravinsky and spent a summer at the Wagner shrine, Bayreuth, teaching the Nibe-lungs “to scream on cue.”

At 23, MTT won the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Koussevitzky Prize. In the ’70s, as the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the BSO, he was already programming thorny contemporary music and championing neglected American composers. He was relentlessly compared to Bernstein, who had become a close friend. Like Lenny, he was charismatic, theatrical, fiercely intelligent and mediagenic. “He reminds me of me at that age,” Bernstein told The New York Times in 1971. “He’s like me in his total embrace of music of any kind.”

While MTT clearly benefited from the comparison, being tagged “the next Leonard Bernstein” also has to have been a burden. “He doesn’t have Lenny’s depth of feeling,” says Harry Shapiro, who joined the BSO as a French-horn player in 1937. “But he’s very wise, and he’s the closest thing we’ll ever get to a Bernstein protege.” Some orchestra players made no secret of their dislike for MTT, whom they considered arrogant and brash. Still, says Shapiro, “we got to like him even though we thought he was a showoff. He’d listen to us.”

In 1978 he took a public fall from grace when he was arrested at Kennedy airport for carrying small amounts of cocaine and marijuana. (He plea-bar-gained and was charged with disorderly conduct.) In the ’70s and'80s he also lost out on a few important conducting jobs. The New York Philharmonic didn’t tap him; his hometown orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, failed to make him music director even though he had spent four years as its principal guest conductor. MTT won’t talk about it: “What’s past is past.” But, he thinks maybe not having such a consuming job so young was a godsend. “You get to the end of a certain number of years and you say, ‘What happened to my life?’ "

Tilson Thomas used those years to nail down core repertory, to work on highly praised projects from Gershwin and Ives to Mahler and Debussy, and to start the New World Symphony, a Miami-based training orchestra. In the past few years, several key people in his life died–his parents, Bernstein, his close friend Audrey Hepburn. It was time, he thought, “to put down some more roots.” With his longtime partner and production manager, Joshua Robison, he bought an airy 1906 house in San Francisco, which they are refurbishing.

Easy exchange: The youthful arrogance is gone. “He’s softer now,” says Shapiro. “There’s something very mysterious about his performances.” Peter Pastreich, SFS executive director, says, “He’s more likely to move you than he was.” In rehearsal, MTT has an easy exchange with the orchestra members. “Michael requires discipline and precision,” says bass trombonist John Engelkes, “but he also will encourage individuality. It’s really liberating.”

On the podium, Tilson Thomas leans forward almost from the ankles, like a bowsprit or an enormous friendly bird, then crouches so low that his head is actually below the music stand. But these days he’s often without a stand, because he knows the music “by heart.” “I’ve always refused to memorize pieces, because when I was working under conductors who were memory freaks, they were looking at the score in their minds. Their eyes were dead. ‘By heart’ is something different. The music becomes integrated into your whole physical and mental being. You’re looking at the musicians and they’re looking at you and something magical happens.”

Tilson Thomas has survived, and ultimately thrived. “I’m the happiest I’ve been since I was in my 20s,” he says, polishing off a bagel. “I entered the music profession with such a sense of wonder and worked with these amazing orchestras so early. Then there were some years where you get knocked around, things make you question why you started.” He gazes out the dining-room window. “I came through that,” he says. “And my wonder is totally intact.” MTT smiles and doesn’t even squint, surrounded by impossibly bright light.

Most conductors of major American orchestra aren’t homegrown:

  • Seiji Ozawa (Japan), Boston Symphony Orchestra * Daniel Barenboim (Israel), Chicago Symphony Orchestra * Christoph von Dohnanyi (Germany), Cleveland Orchestra * Esa-Pekka Salonen (Finland), Los Angeles, Philharmonic * Eiji Oue (Japan), Minnesota Orchestra * Kurt Masur (Germany), New York Philharmonic * Wolfgang Sawallisch (Germany), Philadelphia Orchestra * Lorin Maazel (U.S.), Pittsburgh Symphony * Leonard Slatkin (U.S.), St. Louis Symphony

title: “California Dreamin " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Ronald Crouse”

Tip: The pickup’s great for muddy boots and wet dogs.