MTT's Miami: What Michael Tilson Thomas Left Behind

Michael Tilson Thomas died on August 24, 2024, at the age of 80. He had been living with glioblastoma for two years, and he spent much of that time in Miami — the city he had helped transform into one of the most musically vital places in the United States. He co-founded New World Symphony in 1987 with Lin and Ted Arison, and for the next three and a half decades he shaped it into something that had never existed before: a training academy that was also a world-class performing ensemble, housed in a building that was also a public park, committed to an audience that was also a community.

On December 20, 2026, NWS presents Remembering MTT — a chamber concert that attempts to capture the range of his musical world. The program is a portrait assembled from the music he loved and the music he wrote. Robert Schumann's Andante and Variations, Op. 46 opens the evening — Schumann was a composer MTT returned to throughout his career, drawn to the emotional directness and the structural complexity that coexist in the music. Aaron Copland's Nonet follows, a work from 1960 that MTT performed and recorded with the San Francisco Symphony. Leonard Bernstein's Meditation No. 3 from Mass — a work that MTT conducted in its premiere production in 1971, at the age of 27 — appears in the second half.

The program also includes two movements from MTT's own composition Upon Further Reflection (1973–77): Bygone Beguine and You Come Here Often? — the latter a virtuosic vignette of a chance encounter at a crowded party, which MTT described as a musical joke that took him four years to get right. David Del Tredici's Dynamic Duo for Violin and Bass Trombone, written in 2013, appears alongside Amy Beach's Piano Quintet, Op. 67 — a work from 1907 that MTT championed as part of his lifelong effort to bring neglected American composers into the standard repertoire.

What Miami owes MTT is difficult to quantify. He brought the New World Center into existence — a building that has become one of the most architecturally significant cultural venues in the country. He built an institution that has placed more than 1,100 musicians in orchestras worldwide. He made Miami Beach a destination for serious music. And he did it with a combination of intellectual rigor and genuine warmth that made everyone around him feel that the music was worth fighting for.

Remembering MTT: Sunday, December 20, 2026 at 2:00 PM at New World Center, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall, 500 17th Street, Miami Beach. Tickets at nws.edu.