Welcome to A Song of Zion, our weekly check-in and virtual minyan for Jews on Daily Kos. This is an open thread, and we treat it as a safe space for Jewish folks here. Non-Jews are welcome but we ask that they listen more than speak. No squabbling, please: if you want to fight, please step outside. This is a Special Guest edition celebrating the life and works of Michael Tilson Thomas, Director of the San Francisco Symphony, the New World Symphony for young artists, and heir of a long line of Cantors and influential Jewish musicians here and in Europe.
JTA.org Battling terminal cancer, famed Jewish conductor, composer, teacher and mentor Michael Tilson Thomas prepares for his last concert ... a âcodaâ to a spectacular career...
... in the fall of 1969, Michael Tilson Thomas â a promising, young conductor and scion of Yiddish theater royalty â lifted his baton for his New York debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, [after appointment as] assistant conductor and pianistâŚ. now tapped to replace] William Steinberg, the orchestraâs music director, who had fallen sick mid-concert.
That acclaimed performance by the then 24-year-old catapulted Tilson Thomas onto the world stage [and a] meteoric rise [to] decades conducting some of the worldâs most prestigious orchestras [and composing works of astonishing character]...
...Two months ago, Tilson Thomas announced that, after three years in remission, his aggressive form of brain cancer had returnedâŚ.
âNow is the time to wind down public appearances,â he wrote, in a heart-tugging message on his website ...[with] gratitude for the fulfilling life he has led, shared with his husband, Joshua Robison. The couple met in middle school and have been together nearly 50 yearsâŚ
...Following the [SFS performance], he wrote: âWe all get to say the old show business expression, âItâs a wrap ⌠Life is precious,â he signed offâŚ.
Like many great Maestros, (Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn) MTT began as a kid piano virtuoso. He grew up in LA and graduated from USC with honors in conducting and composing. Interestingly, his next conducting gig after being a Doctoral Asst./Conductor at USC was with the Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria, Asst. Conductor to Friedelind Wagner, the Granddaughter of Richard Wagner and Great-Granddaughter of Franz Liszt! The Liszt connection is important for a pianist/conductor, since Liszt masterfully transcribed great orchestral works for piano, while preserving some of their orchestral colors - no easy feat, and the transcriptions, some of the most challenging piano scores ever, are mandatory study for conductor/composers.
MTTâs dad, Ted, was also an accomplished pianist and all-around musician, who was quite aware of his parentsâ musical background in Yiddish folk music and made sure the young Michael absorbed it all. Thomas here pays tribute to his fatherâs wonderful musical improvisations at the piano, poetry, painting and humanism (screenshot below of parents Ted and Roberta Thomas):
Proud of being from a long line of Cantors, MTT celebrates his grandparents the Thomashefskys, who were originally from a little village in Ukraine, and became big stars and promoters of Yiddish Theatre in America: michaeltilsonthomas.com/... The Thomashevskys Hey, besides being a virtuoso pianist, composer, and Baton man, MTT is also a pretty good Baritone!
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Who is this brilliant young fellow, so passionate, so idealistic? Instead of talking about his early career, we will let him describe it in his own words. First up heâs speaking to the lack of funding for the arts in the US, insufficient rehearsal time, and then his earliest musical adventures:
A very frank and fascinating recounting of his youthful conducting and composing days, and insight into his perception and genius as a teacher himself (young piano virtuoso, remember). He doesnât cut students down to size but helps them nourish their own flowers. He had an early interest in physics and a discerning intellect, which he turned to composing and conducting (above, heâs leading the orchestra in a Brahms Serenade. Itâs interesting, heâs talking about the independence of mental tracks during the music, similar to polyphony). He was fortunate himself to have wonderful teachers like Dorothy Bishop, Ingolf Dahl at USC (here shown going over a Beethoven concerto with him), Terry Sanders and Wagner and Bernstein. As a conductor, he is a renowned interpreter of Mahler, Aaron Copland, Steve Reich, and Charles Ives. Here we will dwell on his own compositions, since he spent so much of his career promoting others and not himself. He is famous in the Classical music world as a teacher and mentor of great perception and supportiveness, and founded the New World Symphony DvoĹĂĄk ) to encourage gifted young musicians.
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A youthful Opus of genius, his From the Diary of Anne Frank was first suggested to MTT by Audrey Hepburn through her work for UNICEF, which commissioned this masterpiece of his. (President Clinton awarded Hepburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador). Hepburn was his first reader for the sprechstimme parts of this composition (means spoken more than sung, but in cadence with the music), and here he explains how much he loved and grew accustomed to the cadences of her voice reading Anneâs Diary:
Whoâs that good-looking wunderkind with the famous star? Unfortunately we couldnât find a free recording of the Hepburn reading for you, but here is a later complete one, all 3 movements:
With Isabel Leonard (who he says is a wonderful reader whose cadences remind him of Hepburn) and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra:
The piece owes much to the language of Bernstein (one of MTTâs mentors) and Copland, with this particular work channeling Copland perhaps a bit more â Quartal harmonies in a modern tertian vocabulary. We could trace its noble bones using Schenkerian Reduction or modern Chord Analysis, but how much better to have the composerâs own words:
âThe work is a melodrama in the form of symphonic variations. It was written for Audrey Hepburn who had grown up in occupied Holland, was the same age as Anne Frank and strongly identified with her and with the suffering of all children. This work was commissioned as a vehicle for Audrey in her role as an ambassador for UNICEF. It takes its shape primarily from the diary passages that Audrey and I selected and read together. While some of the words concern tragic events, many of them reflect the youthful, optimistic, inquisitive, and compassionate spirit of their author. We wanted these qualities to come through in the piece. I derived the themes from turns of phrases in traditional Jewish music, especially the hymn to life, Kaddish .â The orchestration is just gorgeous.
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Bygone Beguine is an early piano-whiz-kid work, where insane leaps and superfast tremolo notes are just off the cuff. A little jazzy and very nice indeed (well-played here by John Wilson):
âBygone Beguineâ (1973)
âIn the early 1970s, I was falling in love for the first time, experiencing those radiant, achy, free-fall, out-of-control feelings. The emotional streams resolved themselves into music. I could play it for some time before I could imagine how it might be written down.
This piece was originally a simple little song, but one that reflected all of my inescapable influences, including ragas, gamelan, bossa nova, the piano music of Schumann and Debussy, as well as the musical language of Monteverdi and Berg and Peggy Leeâs inimitable rendition of the song Alley Cat. All of these flowed together in a way that seemed completely naturalâto me, anyway. The ensemble under my fingers consists of a free-floating treble melody, a rhythm section riff, a baritone horn or trombone line, and a bass line. I sometimes played this piece in restaurants, spelling some of my pianist friends. I also played it on some first dates, most importantly the one with the man who became my husband.
One memorable Sunday afternoon I drove up to Danbury, Connecticut to play it for Laura Nyro, whose music and spirit have been an enduring part of my life. It was a laid-back sunny day. Laura and her friends were lounging poolside, listening to old R&B. The piece is dedicated to her.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
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Hereâs his Sunset Soliloquy , another early work, in this case written at his parentsâ house. Introspective, meditative, sometimes difficult, always inspired â like the composer:
âSunset Soliloquy,â Whitsett Avenue, 1963
âIn the late afternoon, the sun poured through the Venetian blinds in bands of shimmering light. It was a time for me to be alone with the piano in my parentâs darkened living room. As my father and his father before him, I was seeking, through improvisation, some kind of understanding of who I was. I was already aware of the many âmeâsâ whose spirits seemed to inhabit one or another of my hands. My left hand was the home of a reflective spirit that arched in lyrical phrases like a cello solo. My right hand was ruled by a scampering spirit that zanily darted about in fits and starts like fractured village music full of caprices and clashes. Now and again, there was much gentler musicâa duet played by both hands, one tentative finger at a time. Eventually my hands found a way to make all of this music simultaneous and independent, gradually uniting in a shared cry, after which they quietly and somewhat nonchalantly faded away. The piece is a record of that process. The beginning, the duet, and the ending are much as they were when the piece first came into focus some fifty years ago. The right-hand music was tougher to resolve. It seemed it had other urges, and meandered its way toward the more thoughtful and lyrical world of its partner.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
Of great interest, here he is in rehearsal with John Wilson playing this piece, passing the mantle. Fascinating from a musicianâs standpoint:
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Here is his lovely and intimate Grace , a wonderful piano/vocal for his mentor Bernstein, lyrics by him showing his wry sense of humor and joie-de-vivre :
ââGraceâ was written in 1988 for Leonard Bernsteinâs 70th birthday celebration at Tanglewood. Soprano Roberta Alexander was the soloist and I accompanied her in the first performance, on August 24. It was part of a marathon concert of music written especially for the occasion. It meant a lot to me that Lenny loved it and asked that we sing it before meals and gatherings during that final period of his life.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
Thanks to whoever is there
Yesterday, swimming swift in a salty sea
Thanks to whoever is there
So commend
So many people calling out to one another,
Make us grateful whatever comes next
So many memoriesâŚ
Ah-ah-ah Amen
Thomas recounts his first meeting with Leonard Bernstein, and the beginning of their teacher/student relationship. Bernstein taught him much about bringing out orchestral colors and improving clarity of polyphony with limited rehearsal times, crowning MTT's own considerable studies. After Lennyâs passing, he inherited Bernstein's hallowed Baton as Americaâs greatest living composer/conductor (our words and the Classical Music worldâs judgement, not his):
The music he refers to that he played off the bat for Bernstein was Mahlerâs great symphonic poem with voices, âDas Lied Von Der Erdeâ, Song of The Earth (bottom clip). Since both were huge Mahler fans and interpreters, that sealed the deal. MTT has been the greatest interpreter of Mahler since Lenny left us.
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Hereâs a song he wrote for himself and college friends back in the day. The lyrics by him are characteristically witty and perceptive. Another lovely piano/vocal sung wonderfully here by Sasha Cooke, a friend and colleague:
Not Everyone Thinks That Iâm Beautiful
Not everyone thinks that Iâm beautiful
Not everything works like I hoped it would
Well I donât have a fortune to give
So, when I see you see it too
âWhile living in a loft in New York in the 1980s, I wrote some songs with no one particular in mind. I was so pleased when, in a series of recitals beginning in 1998, Frederica von Stade included âNot Everyone Thinks That Iâm Beautiful.â It delights me that Sasha Cooke has made this song a part of her repertoire and that Jean-Yves Thibaudet could join her to record this song for Grace .â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
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His Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind is a more modern piece using advanced jazz harmonies, but supple and beautiful in its instrumentation. Inspired by Carl Sandburgâs poem of the same name, here is MTT's realization, with full-blown Jazz orchestra starting about 4 minutes in. Itâs a 3-movement medley of Modern Classical and Jazz. But itâs never noisy; even its most dissonant passages have an exquisite delicacy and refinement:
âSandburgâs âFour Preludes On Playthings of the Windâ, was especially riveting. It seemed like a kind of honky-tonk âOzymandiasââ a mixture of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Rachel Lindsay.
In 1976, I did a rough piano version. The mixture of musical styles was there from the beginning. In 2003, spending the summer in Santa Fe, I brought the sketches into a more continuous form. In 2015â16 I expanded it into a piece for solo soprano, backup singers, bar band, and chamber orchestra. Vocally, the piece is inspired by Sarah Vaughan, Leontyne Price, James Brown, and Igor Stravinskyâall artists I had the pleasure of knowing. I realized that the piece would be perfect for Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, and she became my collaborator in bringing it to life. I am also indebted to Bruce Coughlin for aiding me in realizing the score.â â MTT
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Hereâs his Street Song for Symphonic Brass, very round and golden and incredibly smooth 5-part counterpoint for brass, definitely channeling Copland:
âThe founding members of the Empire Brass Quintet were some of my oldest musical friends. Our meeting dates back to student days at Tanglewood in the early 1970s when we discovered that we had reverence for good notes, good tunes, and good licks, whether from organum, serialism, or bopÂshooÂwop. They commissioned and premiered Street Song and made the first recording.
Iâm pleased that the quintet version has found its way into brass chamber programs. On the occasion of a concert with the London Symphony brass, the larger version was created. The group is expanded to twelve players and introduces one new instrument: the flĂźgelhorn. I am indebted to Eric Crees for making this version possible.
Street Song is in three continuous partsâan interweaving of three âsongs.â The first song opens with a jagged downward scale suspending in the air a sweetly dissonant harmony that very slowly resolves. This moment of resolution is followed by responses of various kinds. The harmonies move between the world of the Middle Ages and the present, between East and West, and always, of course, from the perspective of twentieth century America. Overall, the movement is about starting and stopping, the moments of suspension always leading somewhere else.
The second âsongâ is introduced by a singsong horn solo. It is followed by a simple trumpet duet, which was first written around 1972. It is folkÂlike in character and also cadences with suspended moments of slowly resolving dissonance.
The third song is really more of a dance. It begins when the trombone slides a step higher, bringing the work into the key of F-Âsharp and into a jazzier swing. The harmonies here are the stacked up moments of suspension from the first two parts of the piece. By now, I hope these âdissonantâ sounds actually begin to sound âconsonant.â There is a resolution, but it is the world of a musician who, after many after-Âhour gigs, greets the dawn. Finally, the three songs are brought together, and the work moves toward a quiet close.
Street Song is dedicated to my father Ted, who was and still is the central musical influence on my life.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
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MTT could write advanced Jazz like nobodyâs business, as in Sentimental Again:
âFrom 1975 until her passing in 1990 I had the joy of performing and recording with the great Sarah Vaughan. âSentimental Againâ was inspired by and is dedicated to Sarah. Audra McDonald made it her own with San Francisco Symphony on December 31, 1999, in this New Yearâs Eve performance celebrating the start of the new millennium.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
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Notturno
âNotturno evokes the lyrical world of Italian music. Its shape recalls concert arias, âĂŠtudes de concertâ and salon piecesâcreations of a bygone world that I still hold in great esteem. I remember the great care and attention that cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and violinist Jascha Heifetz lavished on such pieces, and some of the seemingly effortless charm of that genre has found its way into this work.
The piece has a subtext. Itâs about the role music plays in the life of a musician, and the role we musicians play (must play?) in life. Itâs about musicians first discovering the wonder of music and their own unique voice. Then, of course, thereâs the profession: the concerts, gigs, the routine, and the wear and tear that can lead you to ask, âWhy am I carrying on with all this trilling and arpeggiating?â But we play what we must play with excellence and commitment, even if it drives us nearly over the edge. The great part is, if we have the chance to take a little breath, we discover that the wonder never goes away.
Notturno was written for the American flautist Paula Robison, who introduced it with members of the New World Symphony in 2005. I composed it in tribute to Paul Renzi, who was for fifty years principal flautist of the San Francisco Symphony.â
âMichael Tilson Thomas
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Meditations on Rilke is a kind of personal musical journal the composer kept throughout his career. Six pieces of just gorgeous orchestration with vocals, it was also inspired by his love for the poet Rilke and his eclectic work. The first one is unabashedly Jazzy:
âFor my father, grandfather, and even great-grandfather, music was a lifelong journal, a confessional companion, into which new entries were always being added. It is much the same for me, and in composing these Meditations on Rilke , whose poems are so varied in mood and character, my own lifelong âmusical journalâ was a lens through which to view and express this poetry. My wish is that all people would have this kind of relationship to musicâmusic spontaneously popping into their mindsâperhaps in recollection and perhaps in anticipation of places within their spirits.â
âThe Meditations on Rilke are based on motives that recur, recombine, and morph differently in each song. The opening piano solo in âHerbsttagâ (âAutumn Dayâ) musically describes the opening paragraph of these notes. âHerbsttagâ was the first song to be written, and has existed for solo voice, solo trombone, solo cello, and now this orchestral version. It introduces most of the motives that are heard in the rest of the cycle. (Note that, while translator Robert Bly renders the title âHerbsttagâ as âOctober Dayâ in the texts that follow, the literal English translation is âAutumn Day.â)â
âThe fourth song, âImmer Wiederâ (âAgain, Again!â), is like a Schubert âcowboy song.â My father often pointed out the similarity between songs like âRed River Valleyâ to many of Schubertâs songs. The fifth song, âImaginärer Lebenslaufâ (âImaginary Biographyâ), is a duet and was inspired by the wonderful opportunity of collaborating with Sasha Cooke and Ryan McKinny, who premiered the piece. The sixth song returns to the subject of autumn (âHerbst.â) It opens with a flute solo that connects the motives from the earlier songs into one long melody.
The musical language in these songs is quite traditional. There are melodies, harmonies, bass lines, and invertible counterpoint. My greatest concern has always been about what remains with the listener when the music ends. It is my hope that these musical reflections of many years may stick with you.â â MTT
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Here's a wonderful piano piece he wrote for his friend, student and colleague Yuja Wang's birthday. Student in the art of orchestral playing; Miss Wang is herself quite the piano virtuoso. She spent over a decade here in San Francisco under MTT's baton doing stunning concerto performances (her Rachmaninoff is famous), but also learning the subtleties of instrumentation from the heir of Bernstein and Copland, and how to shape piano phrases with orchestral colors like the great Franz Liszt did (his piano transcriptions of overtures, symphonies and operas are a sine qua non of the art of conjuring symphonic tone colors on the piano, and fiendishly difficult). Of course Miss Wang was familiar with this subject already, but here was an historic opportunity to learn from a Maestro who had mastered this art under Liszt's direct descendant. Great artists become so through humility and relentless study.
And besides the work, there is a genuine friendship between MTT and Miss Yuja. After all she is the new wunderkind on the block. He understands the pressure and the expectations. There's real warmth when you see them interacting on stage, or in private by all accounts. MTT is very approachable, candid and warm in his private persona. He wrote this deeply personal piece as a tribute to their friendship. It's like Copland a little but also recalls some of the youthful energy of Gershwin. He says its inception was in an SF cafe they are both fond of, which plays classical and modern music. It's advanced without being too showy - intimate, and the title refers to an inside joke:
Do You Come Here Often? For Yuja Wang
This is what wunderkinds write for each other. Gets a bit harder towards the end. No big deal, just a little private joke between piano wizards!
As Robert Schumann wrote in his review of Chopin: "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!"
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We were fortunate to have had him in our era. May his remembrance be inspiration and blessing.
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Shabbat shalom
