Joan Baez - Knowledge Network

Radio City
San Francisco
Symphony in Concert
Wednesdays at 9pm,
beginning May 4
Repeats at 1am
Classical music lovers will delight in four live
performances by the San Francisco Symphony,
one of the world’s leading orchestras. Conducted
by its Grammy award-winning music director
Michael Tilson Thomas, each week features a
full-length concert played with the precision,
energy and poise for which the SFS is known.
Simply stunning!
May 4 Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4
May 11 Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, Eroica
May 18 Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring plus
excerpts from The Firebird
May 25 Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
The Superconductor: Michael Tilson Thomas
Known for his charismatic showmanship and unflagging exuberance, conductor Michael
Tilson Thomas is a music powerhouse. MTT, as he calls himself - sort of a personal “brand”
– has a talent for unconventional thinking that sees him heading up a number of innovative
projects. All of it to keep people interested and engaged in classical music.
As music director of the San Francisco Symphony, he created the television series
Keeping Score – meant to enlighten the masses on classical music - plus a companion
web site, radio series and programs in schools. He also runs the New World Symphony, a
national training orchestra for gifted young musicians, and is the driving force behind their
new Frank Gehry-designed campus in Miami. And then there’s the YouTube Symphony
Orchestra, made up of musicians selected online and brought together for a week-long
festival and concert.
You could say the performing arts are in MTT’s blood. He was born in Los Angeles,
where his parents both worked in the film industry. His grandparents, Boris and Bessie
Thomashefsky, were huge stars in Yiddish theatre.
In a 2010 interview with Mother Jones magazine, MTT shared what drives him: “The
way you survive in the performing arts is by having a sense of your audience, and doing
things which entertain and satisfy the audience, but in a more important way, cause the
audience to question many things. This is what my grandparents did. So part of my mission
is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so
they don’t feel that it is something remote that they have to specially prepare themselves
for, or dress up for.”
6 M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 1 P RO G R A M G U I D E