BishopBerkeley: I wonder if Evgeny might be related to San Francisco Symphony Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (whose original name was Thomashefsky)?Maestro "MTT's" grandparents were prominent in Yiddish theater (Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky), and his father was Broadway stage manager Ted Thomas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michae...
http://www.sfsymphony.org/templates...
I note that "MTT" was named Gramophone's "2005 Artist of the Year":
http://www.sfsymphony.org/templates...
"One of my very, very first memories is of my parents' house in Los Angeles. In the late afternoon, the light would come through windows at one end of the house. There were venetian blinds and the blinds would be open so the light would come into the room in bands of light, because there was a lot of dust in the air in the San Fernando Valley in the summertime especially, and in these bands of light there were motes of dust, dancing in the light; and my first musical memory, I think, is watching those particles of dust moving, and reaching way up over my head to the keyboard of this big old upright rosewood Steinway grand that my parents had, and trying to play notes that would accompany this dance of the dust."
– From MTT's Viva Voce, Conversations with Edward Seckerson (Faber & Faber, 1994)