Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944), is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony. As a student of Richard Wagner's granddaughter, Friedelind Wagner, Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival, the annual Wagner opera festival in Bayreuth, Germany.
Mr. Tilson Thomas has been regarded as a protege of famed conductor/composer, Leonard Bernstein.
In April 2005 he conducted the Carnegie Hall premiere of The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. Oddly enough, Mr. Tilson Thomas's grandfather produced a Yiddish-language production of Wagner's opera, Parsifal.
For many years the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was represented by the publicist, Margaret Carson, who also represented Leonard Bernstein.
Coincidentally, Margaret Carson was the mother of Charles Frederick Carson Ruff, Esq., a longtime Covington & Burling partner and chief White House Counsel in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Ruff argued Mr. Clinton’s case at his Senate impeachment trial in 1999.
Charles F.C. Ruff, as D.C. Corporation Counsel, defended the appeal of my unlawful job termination case, Freedman v. D.C. Dept. Human Rights, D.C.C.A. no. 96-CV-961 (Sept. 1, 1998).
Margaret Carson died in the year 2007 at the age of 96.
July 7, 1997
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Michael Tilson Thomas
San Francisco Symphony
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco, CA 94102
RE: Weapons Possession - Intent to Inflict Grievous Bodily Harm/Possible Intent to Commit Murder - D.C. Corporation Counsel Affirmation - Possible Concealment of State and/or Federal Weapons Law Violations
Dear Mr. Tilson Thomas:
During the period March 1988 to October 1991 I was employed as a legal assistant in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld ("Akin Gump"). Attorney managers at Akin Gump terminated my employment effective October 29, 1991 upon determining, in consultation with a psychiatrist, that a complaint of harassment I had lodged against several co-workers was attributable to a psychiatric symptom ("ideas of reference") prominent in the psychotic disorders and typically associated with a risk of violent behavior. See Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, D.C. Superior Court no. MPA 95-14 (final order issued June 10, 1996). In the period immediately after my job termination senior Akin Gump managers determined that it was advisable to secure the office of my direct supervisor against a possible homicidal assault, which it was feared I might commit.
In pleadings filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, the District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel (Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq.) affirmed that Akin Gump personnel had geniune concerns that I might have had plans to procure firearms for an unlawful purpose and possessed the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm or commit murder. Mr. Ruff currently serves as chief White House Counsel to President Clinton (telephone no.: 202 456 1414).
I have been under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential security risk to President Clinton, and was interrogated at the Washington Field Office by Special Agent Philip C. Leadroot (202 435-5100) as recently as February 1996, about 16 months ago. Questioning by Mr. Leadroot centered on the issue of presidential assassination.
There is a remote possibility that Akin Gump's attorney managers contacted you in about the year 1995 in connection with a few creative pieces I had written, and, if any communications did occur, you may, therefore, possess information pertinent to a criminal investigation conducted by the U.S. Secret Service during the period December 1994-February 1995 relating to the security of the President of the United States. I request that you disclose to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (David M. Bowie, Supervisory Special Agent, Washington Field Office, 202 252 7801) the content of any communications you may have had with any Akin Gump attorneys regarding me. Attorneys who may have directed inquiries to you include Earl L. Segal, Malcolm Lassman, or Laurence J. Hoffman (managing partner), among others.
An inquiry by Akin Gump in 1995 may have been prompted by an article about you published in the August 20, 1995 edition of The New York Times Magazine. By the way, did your grandfather really produce a Yiddish-language version of Wagner's opera Parsifal?
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/20/magazine/an-older-wiser-humbler-wunderkind.html?pagewanted=1
Enclosed are some additional documents that provide background to the matters discussed in this letter.
Be advised: President Clinton's own lawyer, chief White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, is talking real guns, real bullets, real brain tissue.
Please give my regards to Mr. Ruff's mom.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: David M. Bowie, FBI Supervisory Special Agent
bcc: Lloyd N. Cutler, Esq., Past President, Metropolitan Opera Guild
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Lloyd Cutler, Esq. (now deceased) was a founding partner of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Mr. Cutler served as chief White House counsel in the Clinton Administration.
He was a friend of Bob Strauss and was very active with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Apparently Supervisory S.A. David Bowie at the FBI didn't see me as a violence risk in 1997?
What is the problem with the Justice Department these days?
I tell you there was something fishy about my friendly visit from law enforcement on January 15, 2010.
Michael Tilson Thomas's grandfather Boris Thomashefsky produced a Yiddish-language version of Wagner's Parsifal--with costumes he shlepped downtown from the Metropolitan Opera House!
Friedelind Wagner (29 March 1918 – 8 May 1991) was the daughter of German opera composer Siegfried Wagner and his English wife, Winifred Williams and the granddaughter of the famous composer Richard Wagner. Born in Bayreuth, she was known by the nickname "Maus" or "Mausi". Along with other members of her family, from early in life Friedelind Wagner was involved with the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In 1936, she began work as an assistant to Heinz Tietjen but her outspoken criticism of close family friend Adolf Hitler and the policies of the Third Reich led to her leaving Germany in 1939. She lived for a short time in Switzerland before emigrating first to England where she began writing anti-Nazi columns for the Daily Sketch newspaper.
With the help of Arturo Toscanini, in 1941 Wagner moved to the United States where she became involved with radio broadcasts of anti-Nazi propaganda. She also helped Professor Henry A. Murray, Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic plus psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer and other experts to create a 1943 report for the OSS designated as the Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler. With writer Page Cooper, in 1945 Friedelind Wagner wrote her memoirs "Heritage of Fire." Published in English in New York City by Harper & brothers, it was released in London in 1948 as "The Royal Family of Bayreuth."
Wagner eventually returned to work at the Bayreuth Festival and in 1976 was part of the team that made the documentary film "Wagner:The Making of the Ring" which was filmed during the creation of the Pierre Boulez/Patrice Chéreau Ring. The Times wrote: "This (Boulez/Chéreau) Ring is the most important single event in the democratization of opera and will put opera back at the center of all the arts, where it belongs."
As a student of Friedelind Wagner, American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival
In her latter years Friedelind Wagner made her home in Lucerne, Switzerland. Never married, she died in a hospital in Herdecke, Germany, in 1991.
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