Jbitman · Public domain

Longtime music director of the San Francisco Symphony and founder of the New World Symphony training orchestra in Miami Beach, Thomas built a reputation on advocacy for American composers, giving first recordings of works by Charles Ives and Steve Reich alongside a career-long focus on Gustav Mahler. He introduced orchestral music to television audiences through Young People's Concerts and his own Keeping Score series, and composed works including From the Diary of Anne Frank and Shówa/Shoáh, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.