Getting all aglitter for MTT

Inside a huge orange and purple polka-dot tent, Tom Goldman, president of the San Francisco Symphony, climbed to a stage and urged a crowd of 400 elegantly dressed people to quiet down at their tables.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “MTT.”

A curtain rose and Michael Tilson Thomas strode onto the stage, flanked by a chorus line of Brazilian dancers wearing more feathers than anything else.

Tilson Thomas bowed, then pretended to conduct the dinner guests as they sang, “Happy birthday, MTT.”

“Look,” said Liz Larned, a member of the dinner committee, “he’s almost speechless. This is rare.”

Tilson Thomas turned 60 in December and this year celebrates his 10th anniversary with the symphony.

In San Francisco, he enjoys a cult of personality that a Soviet dictator might envy. He’s universally known by his initials in a way that only a few presidents are. His sharp, thin face and flop of gray hair adorn posters, and the Davies Symphony Hall is decorated with photos of the conductor as a boy and a man, no captions necessary.

“Let us toast our maestro,” Goldman said.

And so San Francisco did, with a gala night of events as eclectic as the city and its beloved maestro. There were celebrity divas, a Brazilian samba band, a gamelan orchestra.

The party kicked off with cocktails inside the striking tent, where the floor and seat coverings were swathed in matching polka dots (designed by Stanlee R. Gatti), followed by a dinner to raise an endowment named after Tilson Thomas for new commissions and symphony premieres.

The cheap tickets started at $1,000 per person for the dinner, which featured baked crab a la MTT and tenderloin with sea urchin compound butter.

Guests at the Jan. 13 event included composer John Adams; novelist Amy Tan; Rep. Nancy Pelosi; chef Alice Waters; broker Charles Schwab; Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich; Mayor Gavin Newsom; gazillionaire Gordon Getty and his wife, Ann; and actor Robin Williams (who picked up the carnation ball in the center of his table and passed it around like a beach ball).

“My grandparents said, above all, stay out of show business,” Tilson Thomas told the crowd. “You’ve dragged me into it. I can only accept this, really, as a celebration of what we’ve accomplished together and what we will accomplish. Here’s to you.”

After dinner, Tilson Thomas took the stage at the symphony hall like a rock star, the audience greeting him with a standing ovation. He led the orchestra through a dizzyingly varied program. There was a sublime Mahler scherzo (Symphony No. 1), a whimsical Gershwin promenade, a rambunctious Copland hoedown. “So many of the composers have been personal friends,” Tilson Thomas joked.

Gathering an operatic A-list (Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Renee Fleming, Audra McDonald) around him on stage, Tilson Thomas sat at a piano and played a handful of his own songs, sharing memories from his career (six Grammys, founding Miami’s New World Symphony, recording an epic Mahler cycle) between numbers. He recalled that when he first conducted in Vienna he was excited to find out that his mentor, Leonard Bernstein, was in town -- only to learn that the famed conductor was going to see Hampson sing at another venue the same night. “I forgave him,” Tilson Thomas said.

Hampson led the symphony through another rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Tilson Thomas choked up with emotion and noted that the symphony will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011.

“I propose we continue to collaborate toward that amazing event,” he said.

No one disagreed.