Metallica Honors Michael Tilson Thomas: A Titan Remembered
Metallica pays tribute to the late conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, recognizing his pivotal role in their S&M2 concerts and his broader impact on classical music.
The metal giants Metallica have honored the late Michael Tilson Thomas, the celebrated conductor and composer who led the San Francisco Symphony during their groundbreaking S&M2 concerts in 2019. The band shared their heartfelt tribute in an Instagram post following Thomas's passing at age 81 after a battle with brain cancer, as reported by The New York Times.
"It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of legendary conductor Michael Tilson Thomas,” Metallica wrote, acknowledging MTT as "a towering figure in classical music" and a driving force behind the S&M2 collaboration.
Michael Tilson Thomas
"MTT was more than a conductor; an accomplished pianist and composer, he served as the San Francisco Symphony’s musical director for 25 years,” the band continued. “During his time with the orchestra, he brought innovation, experimentation, and community engagement to San Francisco. He fostered contemporary music by forming relationships with living composers and creating fresh accounts of standard repertory. Throughout his career, he earned 12 Grammy Awards."
"We 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,” they added. “He will be sorely missed.”
The S&M2 concerts were a sequel to Metallica’s original S&M (“Symphony & Metallica”) concerts from 1999, which featured conductor Michael Kamen. MTT's approach differed significantly; he integrated classical repertoire for Metallica to perform with the symphony, rather than simply having the orchestra accompany the band. Highlights included the symphony performing Sergei Prokofiev’s "Scythian Suite, Opus 20 II: The Enemy God and the Dance of the Dark Spirits,” followed by Metallica joining them for an arrangement of Alexander Mosolov’s "The Iron Foundry, Opus 19."
"The minute MTT suggested it, the whole thing just oozed rock collaboration,” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone in 2019. “About a week before the rehearsals started, MTT and his team came out to HQ and we started just going through it. … And all of a sudden, there was a beat or a drum pattern I hit upon, and Kirk Hammett started doing that crazy melody and James started doing his chunky riff thing and it was off to the races.”
"It’s amazing just to watch the orchestra go through all the different cycles of it and build it up so it sounds like an industrial machine,” Hammett added. "I would have liked to have done a guitar solo in it, but I think I was too late to the game for that."
In a previous interview with Rolling Stone, Thomas shared his perspective on the connection between classical music and Metallica’s sound. “Some of the pieces we’re doing in the second half of the show, these are pieces that come from the Soviet period, when there was such interest in ‘primitivism’ and ‘futurism’ and many of these pieces contain a lot of the elements that are involved in what Metallica does,” he said. “It’s been great fun introducing that material to them, and they’re enjoying it and wanting to play along with it.”
He also reflected on the unique energy of performing with Metallica: "The thing we absolutely can’t imagine in classical music is the response from the audience,” MTT said. “Before the song even begins, we’re experiencing what we would normally think of as a standing ovation. It’s just huge. We’ve had to learn that 19,000 people screaming at the top of their lungs can produce a whole other level of sound you have to work your way through.”
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