“Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Mark Robison, partners for 38 years, were married on Sunday at the home of former San Francisco Symphony board President Nancy Bechtle and her husband, Joachim,” writes Leah Garchik in Tuesday’s (11/3) San Francisco Chronicle. “Thomas, who will be 70 in December, is marking his 20th anniversary this year as maestro of the San Francisco Symphony; Robison, 68, is his manager…. Thomas and Robison … met as fellow members of North Hollywood’s Walter Reed Junior High School orchestra. Thomas played oboe and piano; Robison played cello…. The families of Thomas and Robison had been part of a Los Angeles community of artists and creative people with common political beliefs. Thomas’s father was a producer in the Mercury Theatre Company before working in film and TV in Los Angeles; his mother was head of research for Columbia Pictures. Both of Robison’s parents—Naomi Robison, an actor who became a teacher, and David Robison, a musicologist who became a playwright and screenwriter—were on the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy years…. The two became partners in 1976, and … now live in San Francisco and Miami, where they preside over the New World Symphony, a postgraduate training orchestra for young musicians.”
Posted November 4, 2014
