“Bay Area classical music lovers might be forgiven for imagining that we know Michael Tilson Thomas pretty well by this point,” writes Joshua Kosman in Friday’s (10/23) San Francisco Chronicle. “He spent 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony…. We’ve heard his best stories by now. A new full-length documentary based on his life and career, which is set to air on Friday, Oct. 23, as part of PBS’ ‘American Masters’ series, doesn’t so much refute that idea as give it new complexity and depth. Titled ‘Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is’—an allusion to the passion for temporal specificity that he shares with the late James Brown—it takes the viewer on a genial, roundabout tour of Thomas’ history. It’s one of two back-to-back offerings about Thomas and the Symphony coming to PBS, followed on Thursday, Oct. 29, by ‘Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony: S&M2,’ a record of the collaboration that opened Chase Center … Perhaps most winning of all is the emphasis on Thomas’ relationship with Joshua Robison, his husband and business partner. The story of how they met in junior high school, then reconnected years later to forge a life together, is impossible to resist.”
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