National Endowment for the Arts Statement on National Medal of Arts Michael Tilson Thomas
Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas at the Medal of Arts ceremony at the White House on February 25, 2010. The National Medal of Arts is a presidential initiative managed by the National Endowment for the Arts and is the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence. Photo by Richard Frasier
It is with great sadness that the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledges the death of conductor, pianist, and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, recipient of a 2009 National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government.
Tilson Thomas was a transformational cultural leader and among the most influential American conductors of his generation. He co-founded the New World Symphony and served for decades as its artistic leader, establishing it as a post-graduate orchestral academy dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music.
He also served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years—the longest-serving music director in the orchestra’s history—and conducted nearly 1,800 concerts during his tenure. Throughout his career, Tilson Thomas enlivened the classical music field by programming works by avant-garde artists such as John Cage and Lou Harrison alongside the classics, including Beethoven and Brahms.
In an interview on the National Endowment for the Arts podcast in 2013, Tilson Thomas said, “I think there was a kind of truth in the music that really affected me from the time I was a very little boy. I was aware when people spoke to one another, they sometimes said words, but perhaps they didn't mean the words quite as sincerely as they wished they did…But in music, it was the absolute truth.”
The National Endowment for the Arts supported dozens of Tilson Thomas’ projects over the years, including Keeping Score, a San Francisco Symphony public television series designed to help grow classical music appreciation; New World Symphony’s Musician Professional Development Program; and various concerts and festivals celebrating musical traditions and composers, such John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, and Gustav Mahler.
A passionate advocate of music education and the use of new technologies, Tilson Thomas received a Peabody Award for his contributions to music education and public media. He was the winner of 12 GRAMMY Awards, along with numerous other honors: he received Gramophone’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024, was named an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 2020, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2019. In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
