I met Michael Thomas on my second day in California in September of 1962. I had arrived by bus from Canada the day before. I took the then still running Red Car to USC, lugging a very heavy suitcase without wheels. At the meeting for incoming Foreign students I discovered that the dorm I would be living in would not be available for several days. Fortunately, a kind alumnus took me to his home, and drove me back and forth to school for three days.
Sitting in the Trojan commissary the next day, probably looking a bit lost, Michael approached and introduced himself. We discovered we were both in the Music school and also both studying piano with John Crown. Thus began our nearly 64 year friendship.
Michael had been in the USC prep department and knew his way around the school which was very helpful.
One of the first things he did was arrange for me to perform a new piano sonata by a student composer, Leroy Southers, which cemented our path to new music.
Dorm life was fine for six months, but that was enough. It turned out that Leroy needed a roommate, so I moved into a four-plex in a group of close to 20 similar Tudor buildings on a private street, called West Adams Gardens. Michael later moved into a unit 3 doors down and across the street. His apartment was upstairs. At that time, the practice rooms for pianists were in an old army barracks at the south end of the campus. Michael and I managed to secure rooms with the best pianos, but the walls were paper-thin. Many a day was it a contest to see who could play loudest or fastest.
A two piano chamber music class with Lillian Steuber was where we began our piano duo work, Brahms, Mozart and then La Valse by Ravel, which we performed on a Music at Noon concert at Hancock Auditorium. It was a half unit required course of all music students, most of whom did not want to listen to student performances.
We received our first standing ovation and I don’t recall ever seeing another one there.
Our second standing ovation came from an equally staid audience after our performance of the four hand version of the Rite of Spring at a Monday evening Concert, attended by Stravinsky. Michael and I had been playing many of these concerts, led by Laurence Morton, who was a friend of Stravinsky. Laurence discovered that the four hand version had never been performed in public. It was used by the rehearsal pianists for the ballet while Stravinsky orchestrated it, and apparently Debussy first heard the piece by playing it with Igor. He asked if he could program it on a Monday Evening Concert, and Stravinsky’s answer was, “Why not, I wrote it”
When we recorded it for Angel records in 1969, Stravinsky suggested that we record on two pianos because “It would better for the stereo” Our second album for Angel was the Cage music for 2 prepared pianos and Steve Reich’s “Four Organs”.
I forgot to mention that at the opening the Bing Auditorium at the L.A. County Museum of Art in 1964, MTT was on the roof of the building conducting the fireworks, while Ingolf Dahl conducted the orchestra in Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music.
Michael took me to his home in the valley in 1962 for my first American Thanksgiving, where I met his parents, Roberta and Ted along with the famous grandmother, Bessie Thomashefsky.
Roberta and Ted became an American family for Caroline and me, and later, Baba and Zayde for our children Heather and Nico, whose biological grandparents were all in Canada.
Later Caroline, who was a registered nurse oversaw the healthcare needs of Roberta and Ted and, after their passing, our daughter Heather, lived in the house while attending UCLA for two years.
Michael and I discovered James Brown, Steve Reich, The Beatles, Charles Ives, and many other amazing artists of the 60s. I miss the days when we would stand in line to get the latest Beatles record and then take it home and play it continuously for an evening.
I was Michael’s pianist in the Young Musicians Foundation debut Orchestra and we performed Ives’ “Three Places in New England.” I remember Michael practicing and succeeding in conducting two separate meters and tempos with each hand.
We were excited when Michael got the assistant conductor position in Boston, though it meant not seeing each other for a while. However, Michael would often make a late night phone call to keep us up-to-date. When he moved to Buffalo we visited him in the house he shared with Betty Walsh. They had a beautiful English sheepdog by the name of Nisi, for Nisi Dominus from the Monteverdi Vespers. Months later I went to LAX to pick up a crate with one of Nisi’s 11 puppies whom we named Buffy, short for Buffalo. She brought love to our family for many years.
in 1967 Michael & And I got to work with Pierre Boulez at the Ojai Festival playing Stravinsky “Les Noces” and imitating Ondes Martinots on synthesizers in music by Varèse. I played about 19 Ojai festivals over the years, one more with Boulez and two more with Michael; Caroline and I have been there every year but two since 1967.
I’m sure my relationship with Michael was a big boost to my small concert career that I tried to balance with all the film and TV soundtracks that I was playing. Studio colleagues would often ask me why I would turn down lucrative recording work to play a Monday evening concert for which I would practice a piece for three months and play it once for $38. I would argue that I needed the balance and the hard work made the recording work easier. They were more understanding when it was a chance to play the “Turangalila Symphonie” with the LA Philharmonic or “Rhapsody in Blue” at the Hollywood Bowl, all conducted by MTT.
I never knew whether it was Laurence Morton or Michael who recommended me to play the Bach C major double harpsichord Concerto with Malcolm Hamilton with the LA Philharmonic but I got a phone call one day with a voice saying “Hello, this is Ernest Fleishman. Would you like to play this piece?” – and all the time I’m thinking OK I play every kind of keyboard instrument in the studios, including the harpsichord but I am by no means a classical harpsichordist. After much hemming and hawing on my part, Ernest stopped and said, “You do play the harpsichord don’t you?” – I quickly said “absolutely,” got the concert details and immediately called Kasimoff Piano and harpsichord rentals to rent a harpsichord for three months. The second of two concerts was the night my first daughter, Heather, was born. Larry Foster, the conductor, gave a speech saying how I knew about the concert more than nine months ago and that we were not going to let it affect our Tempi. I played the piece in a daze. Later, hearing it on radio, I remember being surprised at how good it was. I took my bows, looked at my watch and ran off to the Good Samaritan Hospital in my white tie and tails where Heather was born a half hour later.
Phone calls at any hour of the day or night from around the world where our means of communication until Michael got the job in San Francisco, but we were able to travel to Miami and then to the White Oak plantation and later Leonard Bernstein‘s apartment in New York on his 50th Birthday celebration.
Our visits to the houses in San Francisco and Bolinas were always magical and it was amazing how much the Bolinas house was like a recreation of his parents home in North Hollywood. Joshua was a wonderful addition to the family and I loved him for always making sure that Michael and I had some time together to continue our special friendship.
Two weeks before Joshua‘s accident we were on the phone talking about how important it was for us to take care of the CareGiver; my wife Caroline has Alzheimer’s and Parkinsonism. I think of him and give thanks every time I reach for a banister going down the stairs.
A few months before their passing, my daughter, Nico, and her husband Arnaud looked after Caroline for three days while allowing me to spend a day with Michael and an hour with Joshua in the hospital to say goodbye.
Except for a few momentary memory glitches, MTT was as bright and vibrant as ever. I jokingly said that this was my farewell tour, but it might be me that went first. Sadly, they went first, but didn’t have to spend too much time apart. Michael and Josh. Wonderful human beings. May they rest in peace.❤️
-R.G. June 2026
