Famed – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

The renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas announced on Friday that he would withdraw from performances for the next several months as he recovers from surgery to treat a brain tumor.

Thomas, 76, the former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said in a statement that he would take a hiatus through October as he undergoes treatment. He said doctors recently discovered the tumor and advised he have surgery immediately. He described the surgery, which took place at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, as successful.

“I deeply regret missing projects that I was greatly anticipating,” Thomas said in the statement. “I look forward to seeing everyone again in November.”

Thomas, an eminent figure in the music industry known by the nickname M.T.T., stepped down as the San Francisco Symphony’s music director last year. He had held the post since 1995 and was widely credited with transforming the ensemble into one of the best in the nation and championing works by modern American composers.

Thomas said in the statement that he was canceling his participation in a starry concert with the National Symphony Orchestra in September to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center, as well as appearances with the New World Symphony, a training orchestra for young artists in Miami that he helped found; the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where he was to lead his “Agnegram” alongside works by Beethoven and Copland; and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Alastair Macaulay wrote in 2012 for the New York Times about “Viscera,” the piece Mr. Scarlett later created for the Miami City Ballet, that its “images, constructions and textures” showed why Mr. Scarlett had “achieved the status of an important choreographer of classical ballet. “

Speaking to The Times about Mr. Villella in 2014, Mr. Scarlett said, “I owed Eddy a lot because I was very aware that American executives would all watch to see what the outcome would be. After this piece everyone called. “

Mr Scarlett ended his dance career in 2012 and became the Royal Ballet’s first artist in residence that same year. Over the next seven years, he not only created numerous pieces for his home company, but also choreographed works for the Norwegian National Ballet, New York Ballet, American Ballet Theater, England National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet Queensland Ballet, BalletBoyz and Texas Ballet Theater.

Although he was invited to create abstract works as a guest choreographer, his pieces for the Royal Ballet showed his fondness for storytelling. With works such as “Sweet Violets” (2012), a story of Jack the Ripper and murder in Victorian England, “Hansel and Gretel” (2013) and “The Age of Anxiety”, a ballet on the subject of war based on the poem by WH Auden based Mr. Scarlett, who had the same title and was seated on Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, showed that he was part of a long tradition of dance drama at the Royal Ballet.

In 2016 he created his first full-length work, Frankenstein, a retelling of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel based on a score commissioned by Lowell Liebermann. It received lukewarm reviews both in London and when it was performed by the San Francisco Ballet in 2018. His new version of Swan Lake, performed for the Royal Ballet in 2018, was received with more warmth.

“It’s far from a radical reinvention – the setting and choreography remain close to the nineteenth-century original – but what sets it apart from so many other swan lakes is its attention to dramatic detail,” wrote Judith Mackrell in The Guardian.