Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check. Whoa, when did I get here?
What do you mean? I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future! It was just moments ago.
We do same-day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer. It is the future! It's... it's the present.
And just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind. It's all good. Happens all the time.
Sell your car the convenient way to... Carvana! Pickup times may vary and fees may apply. This is Lee Cowan. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is taking a bow at the podium. He looks back on his 80 years with correspondent Leslie Stoll. So let's start before the beginning with the Tomaszewski's. Who are they? Tomaszewski is the family name of my father's family, basically. So Boris and Bessie Tomaszewski, my paternal grandparents, were Yiddish theater superstars.
There's no other way to describe them. Yiddish theater? Yes. Oh. And they were superstars.
Yes. They were like Taylor and Burton, basically, of the Yiddish theater, which at that point was spilling into a lot of other things. Were they sexy?
Tremendously. That proved to be a big problem sometimes because they did have a lot of people, gals and guys, lusting after them and chasing them, pursuing them, which was amusing. But actually, not so amusing for their kids. Oh, your father, for example. For example, it was not that amusing for him to be going into Lushow's or some restaurant, you know, and oh my God, there's the Tomaszewski boy.
Oh, they're here. He was a song and dance man, I heard. Your grandfather. Boris, the Yiddish star. He was a matinee idol. And he sang? Yes, he could sing. He could dance.
He could. He was a ham. He was a stage person. So you are a performer in many ways. Yes, totally. And you get that almost through your DNA.
Correct. And you were recognized as a very young kid to have a lot of talent. You had incredible teachers. One of your teachers was Stravinsky? Yeah, I worked with a number of people at a very early age, like Stravinsky, Jascha Heifetz and people like that. So you were a prodigy. Well, I was in terms of the people that I was working with and meeting and the regard they had for me and what they were giving me to do.
Pretty advanced, challenging stuff. At a very young age. But nobody, absolutely nobody, wanted me to go into show business or into anything remotely connected with performing art. No, not at all. Not in the family.
Not in the family. Because they had all seen a lot of stories of people in the family who had gone way up and way down and they didn't want me to be exposed to such vagaries of the uncertainty of show business. Well you were going to defy that, weren't you? Well yeah, and I was very involved in sciences at that time. I was doing well in chemistry and other things. They said, well, you know, he's going to be a scientist.
It's much more secure and he's bright and he'll be able to do it. Let's do that. But somehow, somewhere in there, you're diverted into conducting. Now how did that start?
Where did that come from? Well, I was working with a lot of young musicians always, and initially many of them were my age or even perhaps younger. And I always had a lot to say from the very beginning. I was not shy about telling people what they should do, how they should do something. Were you beloved?
At times, maybe. Oh, really? I was becoming some sort of director of some sort. And I was very good at it and actually helped people a lot. And that's a nice theme. I'm very happy to look back at my whole crazy life and say, you know, actually in every one of these periods of my life, I really was always helping people a lot.
Mentoring other kids, because you became a teacher really. Yes. Here's maybe how to put this over the best way. You've got so much going for you, but maybe right here, it's a little bit iffy.
Let's find something more comfortable for you. Wow. And then we build it up from there. Master classes when you were in high school. I was good at it. But the conducting, the actual getting up and leading a young orchestra, when, how, why? It was the next thing to do at that time. So the first time you did it, you said, wow, this is for me? Or how did that move from piano to conducting happen? I didn't like practicing very much.
We all understand that. And I could get very good results as a conductor very quickly. Tell us about the relationship with Leonard Bernstein. What did you learn from him? Many things to do and not to do. Like what not to do, which is more interesting. Well, you know, he wanted to be very friendly.
He wanted to be kind of pals with a lot of people. And I recognize that sometimes that worked and sometimes it absolutely did not work. That there really are moments when a conductor, to be effective, has to kind of say, this is what it is.
This is not what it is. What we're doing today is this, not that, this. Let's work on that. And then you center on that. So you were really watching him, learning.
Yeah, that's part of it. Me and I had seen a lot of other people in showbiz working on various projects and seeing what was the most successful way of working and trying to adopt as much of those things as I could, while still retaining some kind of sense of who I actually was and not trying to be like somebody else. So here you are a very young man.
You're on a fast track. You're being recognized. Leonard Bernstein has recognized you and is almost promoting you. There's a famous picture that I'm dying to get my hands on of you playing a duet with him at Atlas Tully Hall. Do you remember him trying to elbow you?
That's the story. Yeah, I'm not sure there's a picture of exactly that moment, but that certainly was a thing. There was a competitive element between the two of us, especially sometimes in performance. You know, that we'd be playing something and he would be kind of shoving me.
No, I'm doing this bad here. It was all very friendly, very loving, but competitive. He said that when he met you that you reminded him of him at that age, except you were smarter. What a generous thing. He could be very generous. Could be.
Wasn't all the time, but he could be. So Lenny was beginning sort of the wind down of his career as a conductor. He had a long time to go still, but he jokingly said at one point in one late night conversation, he said, you know where I am now? I'm at the, I'm at the zenith.
I'm at the peak, the absolute peak of my decline. He said that. Oh my God. So you know, he was joking about it, but there was a certain sense of how much longer can this guy do?
Absolutely everything for everyone all the time. Oh, good. Buffalo comes in here somewhere. You, you be, you became the principal conductor of your own orchestra, Buffalo, New York. How old?
How was I then? Yeah. I mean, it was a baby early twenties.
You became a principal conductor of an orchestra in your early twenties. Yes. It's kind of unheard of. I guess at a certain point, yes, maybe.
Unheard of. And you're going along, everything is really swimming and then bam, you're arrested at JFK for drug possession. So you thought you, your career was hurt.
Yes. There were times in various late evenings when I thought, well, this is, was nice while it lasted, but we've definitely come to some sort of ending here. How final and how encompassing it will prove to be, can't really tell. But then I was really realizing that there were a lot of people who wanted me to be staying around and were coming up with other ideas of things for me to do. And, and as I, and as I looked at my calendar for the next season, I saw, oh my gosh, you know, there, there are some things there. So I had come out or I was coming out and various people had, or did not have issues about that.
Coming out as gay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, with all at the same time? Yeah. Oh my goodness. There was a lot of pressure. But most of them were taking it in stride and it was kind of nothing we haven't gone through before. Okay.
Maybe I should pause and say, when did you come out? Was it in that period? So there was a lot that you were contending with in your early to middle twenties. Colossal. Yeah.
Theoretically not doable. But it was courageous when you did this, which would have been the middle 1970s or early seventies. Yeah. And it was, it was a brave thing to do for someone in the public eye. And you knew it.
Yeah. So you say, and so many other people say, and in retrospect, I can perceive that a lot of that was true, but in the moment I just had so many things to do. I was concerned about the next performance. Am I on top of it as much as I want to be? And what about my colleagues I'm working with? How comfortable do they feel?
And what could I do to make either of those things better? Was it a problem in your career? No, I think most of the time, nearly all the time it worked well. And people, so many people in the Boston Symphony and in the world of life in New York, like, you know, Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Society and various other groups, they were very happy to see somebody like me come along. And I think part of that was indeed that they thought, oh, here's this kid. There's a lot about him that does remind us of Lenny.
He's definitely got a lot of chops in various areas and he's fun. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview after this break. My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink, then straight to the gym. Pre-K pick up, back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius, got to keep the lights on. When the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius, live, fit, go.
Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. You know that feeling when someone shows up for you just when you need it most? That's what Uber is all about. Not just a ride, dinner at your door. It's how Uber helps you show up for the moments that matter. Because showing up can turn a tough day around or make a good one even better. Whatever it is, big or small, Uber is on the way so you can be on yours.
Uber on our way. Let's jump up to 1987, okay? And you form, you found the New World Symphony in Miami.
What is that? Tell us about that. Well, it started really in Tanglewood because at the end of the summer in Tanglewood, there was always gatherings, parties, people saying goodbye, congratulations. And also people talking about, well, what are you planning to do next? And I thought, this is just ridiculous. These are some of the people I most respect and would most look forward to working with.
So what can I do? And so there should be a place where some of these great people, some of the superstars of Tanglewood could go and continue to grow their personalities, their lives, whatever. People who wanted to do something like that but never had the notion of exactly how it could be done. So I was showing up and talking to a lot of these wonderful old principal players and also the new young players and saying, what would you really like to do? And gradually we began to get our own little kind of academy going.
And that was really the beginning of it. This urge to develop, teach, and you mentioned that it started when you were very young. Which is more important to you? Or maybe they're equal? Maybe it's changed over the years. I mean, the teaching part of it, both my parents were teachers. My mother was quite an excellent, accomplished teacher, a very idealistic woman who really devoted decades of her life to working on very idealistic causes within education. And everyone who had a chance to work with her, they all say, she changed my life. Especially women say, she changed my life. You know, I've been working, things were going along fine. And then your mother gave me a particular paper on whatever it was.
And then she gave it back to me. Then she called me and said, you know, there are a number of things about this paper which are excellent. There is an original approach to the following things. This is interesting. This is interesting. This is a different angle.
This is perspective. You've really got something going here. And I don't know what your life plan is. But we could have a discussion about various things, various kinds of careers you might pursue given the intelligence, the creativity, the whatever that you've got. Are you telling us about your mother or about you? You know, I love it that you're saying that because at my best, I like to think of her and think this is something she would have done or she would have approved of or that she would have devoted time. We talked so much about Leonard Bernstein's influence on you, but there was somebody else in the music world who you also say you learned a great deal from. People are going to be stunned to know that it was James Brown, the James Brown. Explain that. Really, what did you learn from him?
I'm stunned by this. Well he was a total stage person. You know, when he was on stage, he was just on fire in a whole other kind of way. And he was a performer, an astounding performer. And from the first time I heard him, there was just a level of attack in his music making, which was just like, right here, right now, this is how it goes.
And I was so impressed by that. And then as I got to know him a bit more and got to go to some of his rehearsals, I saw the way he handled all that, you know, how very, very specific he was with all of his musicians about exactly what he wanted and also what he didn't want. And at the same time he was always very, very encouraging and very inspiring.
Frightening sometimes, but basically challenging, inspiring. And he was amazed to meet someone like me who was so much younger, yet I knew his music really well. I mean, really well. The songs that I most admired of his are not the top 40 songs, but some other songs which were not big hits, but are so amazing what they do, sometimes with very limited means. So he has a song called Goodbye My Love. This is not a song that many people know. And it just consists of bass player, I don't know if it was Bootsy Collins, but someone in that era, that all they do is go... That's all it is. And then he sort of sings and talks his way through the song. It's half singing, half talking. Goodbye my love. You're throwing me away. Now sometimes people come to the end of an experience. That's all it is. But every one of those little, Goodbye my love, has a slightly different shape.
It's a slightly different glyph. And it's so profound, each one of those little nuances. And there are a number of his songs that weren't top 40, but that played with that kind of idea between speaking and singing and whatever. And they were really profound, I think. Now I have to go listen.
I love that. Can we talk about what a conductor does? I'm asked that question a lot and I'm still trying to work on it. What exactly does a conductor do? It depends to some degree, of course, on how big the ensemble is, what the nature of the challenge is. But ideally a conductor helps people to focus on what is the task at hand? What really are we doing here?
And how does it need to be done? Who's the hardest composer in your interview? The most challenging? Is it Mahler?
For me not. I have this very strong connection with Mahler and his music, which was there. I remember the first time I became aware of that. My parents had left me with some friends of theirs to kind of look after me for a period of hours.
And these friends of theirs who were lawyers, actually. But they had a recording of Bruno Walter conducting Das Sied von der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier as the soloist. And that happens to be, still to this day, I feel like my favorite and utterly inspiring version of that piece, Das Sied von der Erde, which I don't know how well you know that piece.
I don't. What does it mean in English? It means the song of the earth. And it's one of Mahler's last big farewell to everything pieces.
And it's, in my mind, and I think in many other people's minds, one of the all-time most profound, most beautiful creations of Mahler or really anybody else. And I remember being left at these friends of my parents' house for a period of time. They were gone. And they said, oh, well, listen, do you know Das Sied von der Erde very well? We have a really nice performance of it. Would you like to listen to it while your parents are gone?
They'll pick you up. I said, well, sure. And they put it on. And from the first moment the music started, I really felt this jolt of some kind of awareness and power and profundity just hit me. And when I heard that music, I recognized that this music was absolutely an expression of all kinds of things in my family's lives. That the music was witnessing a whole world of questioning, ambiguous questions and little testimonies of sadness quite a lot, but not exclusively. And that had a profound effect on me, hearing that piece.
It changed me. There's a long section. There are all these little folky things that come in and out.
And one of them is two horns in one place, but it's various combination of instruments that duets are going. Of course, the whole Yiddishkeit association with that is perfectly obvious. And the very first time that I was over at Lenny's flat and he said, well, play me something, the music that really means the most to you. And I played him that. You're known for being able to pull emotion out of music more deeply than most conductors. That's kind of your signature. That's what you're known for. And you read the music that way. Am I right about that? I think so. And I think I'm not shy about asking people to really take risks and really go out to the absolute edge of what the music is saying, what it's demanding.
And have courage to go for it. I read that what you like to get out of your orchestras is a sense of spontaneity and a sense for the audience at least to get that they're playing it for the first time, that they're discovering the music right then. Is that a fair description of what you're going for? That's part of it, yeah. And this sense that you're falling off a cliff. It certainly can, from time to time, it can really feel like that, which could be a good or maybe terrifying thing. It's awfully hard to say this is my favorite composer.
I know that's ridiculous. Is it Mahler? At certain points in my life, I probably would have unhesitatingly said that. But as much as I adore his music more than my life, I would not be the person that I am without his music, having been such an important part of it. Music presents the situations of life. It's bitterness or frustration or conflict. But nonetheless, there's still an element of beauteousness. And the message of the music is to hold on to the beauteousness at whatever cost.
Yes. Guttgesucht, as my grandmother would have said. What's that mean? Well said, well spoken. Whatever happens, hold on to the beauteousness.
Whatever happens, hold on to the wondrousness. One of the things you like to do is design adventurous programs for your audiences. Interesting mixtures of composers. And you seem to emphasize American contemporary composers. And you also seem to want to challenge your audiences.
Do you agree with that? I can only say that, especially as a conductor, music director, I feel like I'm kind of like the captain of a ship. So we're on this ship together and we're on the high seas and we're traveling along. And all at once we come to an island. This is a completely uncharted island, not on any map. And it's just crawling with all kinds of animals, creatures that are not described in any encyclopedia or anything, anywhere. They're all completely unknown.
And they're making all these sounds which are completely unrecognizable. Wouldn't that be the most thrilling thing that could possibly happen? Wouldn't that be a lot more interesting than saying, well, we stopped at this great island which had the most unknown beauty-free shopping spot on earth. Wouldn't that be better?
That's what I'm trying to present to give you the opportunity to experience music in that way and this kind of discovery mode. Can we talk about your illness? Illness. You were diagnosed with geoblastoma a long time ago.
This is what Teddy Kennedy and John McCain had. Usually people are told they have months to live. You were diagnosed over four years ago. You're a miracle. Thank you for saying so.
Thank you for noticing. Did they give you any kind of special treatment? Stem cells? Nope. Did they explain it to you? Well, I had some hot tea and a little schmaltz occasionally.
Schmaltz. I know what that is. But nothing special. Did they tell you you only had a few months to live? Yes. Four and a half years ago. It's as if you've been given these kind of bonus years. Four extra bonus years. Nice way to think about it.
Thank you. Do you think about it that way? Maybe sometimes. I just feel very grateful for the time that I've got and how many things that I want to do. I still get to do, hopefully. Well, I'm very grateful that the music still feels so fresh to me and that wherever I am, what's going on, that I can recall it as vividly as I can and be back in it, whether it's a Stravinsky ballet or a James Brown.
The portals to all those musical experiences are wide open for me nearly all the time. It's right there. Do you think you're a lucky man? Do I consider myself a lucky man?
Oh, you bet your life, yes. Because you got to do what you love. I got to do it. I love it. And I just remained fresh. And I've had the opportunity to really share it with a lot of people. You know, there's a wonderful song by Noel Coward. Which one?
I went to a marvelous party. And? Do you know that song? I think so. I think I've heard that song. I wouldn't be able to remember the words, but you do. It's a lot of talking, really.
It's a little bit of singing, a lot of talking. Quite for no reason I'm here for the season. And everybody is high as a kite, living in error with Maude at Cape Ferrar, which couldn't be right. Everyone here is frightfully gay.
No one cares what people say. And so it was last Friday night that I went to a marvelous party. And I must say the fun was intense. We all had to do what the people we knew might be doing a hundred years hence. We talked about growing old gracefully. And Elsie, who's 74, said, A, it's a question of being sincere.
And B, if you're supple, you've nothing to fear. Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier. I couldn't have enjoyed it more. Look, it's terribly simple actually because, as you see, you've got the stick in your hands here, right? Right. So there are only a certain number of ways you can give directions here, right? The sticking can go down. It can go to the left side or to the right side. Look, Ma, I'm doing it.
Or it can go up. That's it. Can you show me how you convey softer and louder? Let's say our tempo is. All right? Yep. So let's say we're showing that if we're in 4-4, 4 goes this way.
It's like a box. Down, across, across, up, down, across, across, up, down. So if you do that and if the gestures are very small, so it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.
The smaller they are, the easier it is to make them faster. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, as opposed to 1, 2, 3, 4. The broader the gesture is, the more it's going to convey activity and or volume.
So 1, 2, 3, 4, as opposed to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. So the smaller gestures are done primarily with the wrist. So if you can hold the stick and just isolate all this. So the only thing we're going to right now is concentrate on is this.
And so we're like 1, 2, 3, 4. See, right now I'm even doing it just with a finger. You could do it just with a finger. Good.
Yeah. I could do this right? And then you can bring your wrist into it. But that's a tempo. What about the volume? Loud, soft? With an orchestra, usually louder is this, like this. Right. Quieter is like this. Oh, okay.
Pretty simple. But I've seen conductors use this hand. Yeah, well, in the old time classically pure way of approaching this, this hand was used only to convey matters of speed, tempo. This hand was used to convey nuance and volume. But, of course, you can mix it up a lot of different ways.
Very few people do strictly one way or another. You said E flat, E flat, and I guess D sharp are two separate notes in an orchestra. But on the piano they're the same note.
How can that be? Well, because actually they are different notes. D sharp and E flat are two different notes. They're tuned very slightly differently.
And if you're playing an instrument like violin or something, it will be played with very slight differentiation between those two notes. Who knew that? Now you do. Now I do. I don't get it, but I do.
Wow. The piano is a kind of glorified xylophone basically. You know, all these notes are the same. This E flat is the same as D sharp.
That's only for convenience and it's also to make it possible to play in many different keys because if you're really playing in perfect intonation, E flat and D sharp, they'd be just different enough that they'd have a kind of squidgy, odd feeling. This has all been compromised so that this note and this note you can play in a key like C minor. It's acceptable.
It's not really in tune, but it's acceptable. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts. Get ready to laugh until it hurts. You're gonna love this.
Novocaine is now streaming on Paramount Plus. I got this condition. I don't feel pain. You're a superhero. No. Yeah. It's an adrenaline rush of fun.
This is the best. And a bloody good time. Almost forgot the best part.
It's the first great action comedy of the year. Let the magic happen. That's good.
Looking forward to it. Novocaine. Rated R. Now streaming on Paramount Plus. Now streaming. Hi again. TV's crookiest crime solver.
I'm Els Beptasiemi. I work with the police. Is on the case.
I like my outlandish theories with a heavy dose of evidence. And ready to go toe to toe with a cavalcade of guest stars. Are you seeing that this is now a murder investigation? It's starting to look that way. Don't miss a moment of the critically acclaimed hit Els Beth.
All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and return CBS Fall. That sounds like fun. Obviously murder's not fun.
