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\n\tMetallica paid tribute to beloved San Francisco Symphony conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on Wednesday (April 22) at his home in San Francisco at age 81. \u201cIt is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas,\u201d the band wrote in a statement. \u201cA towering figure in classical music, many of you became familiar with the man known as MTT when he worked with us as a major driving force in the development and live performances of the S&M2 shows in San Francisco in September of 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe veteran hard rockers collaborated with MTT (as he was affectionally known) for a pair of shows with the San Francisco Symphony on Sept. 6 and 8, 2019 dubbed S&M2, marking the 20th anniversary of Metallica\u2019s original 1999 collaboration with the Symphony at Berkeley that produced the live album, S&M<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMTT was more than a conductor; an accomplished pianist and composer, he served as the San Francisco Symphony\u2019s musical director for 25 years. During his time with the orchestra, he brought innovation, experimentation, and community engagement to San Francisco,\u201d the band continued about the energetic, beloved conductor who led the San Francisco Symphony from 1995-2020 and was known for mixing audience favorites with more challenging and lesser-known works by contemporary composers and his work to expand the orchestra\u2019s audience.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHe fostered contemporary music by forming relationships with living composers and creating fresh accounts of standard repertory. Throughout his career, he earned 12 Grammy Awards,\u201d Metallica wrote. \u201cWe cherished our time with MTT and learned so much working with him to prepare the S&M2 performances; it was a very high honor to have him on the podium for our shows. He will be sorely missed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe S&M2 shows at San Francisco\u2019s Chase Center drew 18,000 fans to the opening of the venue and it featured many of the same songs from the original show, in addition to tracks recorded in the two decades since, including \u201cThe Day That Never Comes,\u201d \u201cConfusion,\u201d \u201cMoth Into Flame,\u201d \u201cHalo on Fire\u201d and \u201cAll Within My Hands.\u201d The shows were conducted by Edwin Outwater and MTT, with the subsequent film directed by Wayne Isham grossing more than $2.5 million in theaters.<\/p>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/rock\/metallica-pay-tribute-michael-tilson-thomas-sm2-conductor-1236230942\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/P115TWF1-e1777041683619.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard Metallica paid tribute to beloved San Francisco Symphony conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on Wednesday (April 22) at his home in San Francisco at age 81. \u201cIt is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas,\u201d the band wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1900583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Billboard](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/2HpFicp.png\")
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