JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is leading some of his final concerts. MTT, as he's long been known, has been battling brain cancer for the last four years. His cancer returned earlier this year. NPR's Greg Allen reports one of his last concerts will be at the orchestral academy he helped found in Miami Beach, the New World Symphony.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: For more than three decades, the New World Symphony has been a home for young musicians, helping them prepare for professional careers. MTT wasn't available for an interview, but his friends and colleagues had a lot to say about him and the institution he built in Miami Beach.
HOWARD HERRING: You can't go to an American orchestra concert without hearing a New World alum.
ALLEN: Howard Herring has worked alongside Michael Tilson Thomas as New World's CEO for more than 20 years. During that time, the New World Symphony has grown from an upstart into an important cultural institution, with an innovative concert hall that was designed by architect Frank Gehry.
HERRING: It's hard to know where to go start. Let's go this way.
ALLEN: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
ALLEN: Herring says from the front doors to the stage, the concert hall reflects MTT's ideas about music and its connection to the community. Almost since the beginning, video has been an integral part of each New World Symphony concert. Video is projected inside the hall and on the building's exterior, where audiences can watch and hear the live performance. In the hall, the performers are surrounded by the audience, and they sit very close to the stage. MTT grew up in a theatrical family, and Herring says his ideas about performance reflect that.
HERRING: It was Michael's theatrical impulse, his understanding of what could happen as a result of the music itself and building theater around it and building video around it that led us to this place.
ALLEN: Putting the audience so close to the performers took some getting used to. A few years after the new concert hall opened, MTT stopped a concert at one point and asked the mother with a fidgeting child seated behind the stage to leave the hall. Since then, the performers and audience members have adjusted, Herring says.
HERRING: We are all comfortable sitting close to each other. In the early days, we had our moments.
ALLEN: More than the concert hall, Michael Tilson Thomas' legacy at New World is in the generations of young musicians he's helped train, nurture and counsel. Vishnu Ramankutty is a viola player in his first year at New World. He first met MTT and played in his orchestra when he was a high school student and saw then the personal interest he took in young musicians.
VISHNU RAMANKUTTY: If someone was, say, for instance, practicing, you know, late at night and MTT was just around, MTT was known as being the sort of individual that, you know, he would knock on the door, and he'd be like, hey, what are you practicing? What's up? Do you need any help?
ALLEN: Michael Linville has known and worked with MTT for more than 30 years, since he first entered New World as a piano fellow. He's been there ever since as a staff member, now a dean. Linville says the news that MTT's cancer had returned and he was ending his professional career was a blow.
MICHAEL LINVILLE: When I think about it, it still is a shock. It's also a miracle that Michael has survived this cancer and, you know, is still getting up on stage and performing. It's quite miraculous.
ALLEN: MTT's last performances as conductor are scheduled this weekend in Miami and next month at his other longtime home, the San Francisco Symphony. Here in Miami, the final program will include Beethoven's Fifth symphony. It was also in the program in the first concert he conducted with New World 37 years ago. Linville says for MTT, the music composed during a time of political upheaval in Europe is deeply personal.
LINVILLE: All of the tumult and the, you know, the unstable nature of the way things were going in Europe then, and the ultimate optimism about what the future might hold.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SYMPHONY'S PERFORMANCE OF BEETHOVEN'S "SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN C MINOR, OP 67: I. ALLEGRO CON BRIO")
ALLEN: Linville says Beethoven's Fifth offers a message of hope. Michael Tilson Thomas believes it's especially relevant today. This weekend's concerts in Miami Beach will be celebratory and somber. As Linville says, Michael's a showman, and he'll put on a great show.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami Beach. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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