CLAUDIA TONI
ADVISOR | ART & CULTURE | CULTURAL POLICY
Music will help you be uncomfortable. Everywhere. If you do not feel this, things will not change. But if you do, others will watch and say ‘if she has changed, why can not I change?’ That’s it - it’s contagious!"
- Claudia Toni, for Ilumina Report
Born in São Paulo in 1954, Claudia Toni is a distinguished consultant in arts and culture and an expert in cultural policy. Armed with a degree in History from the University of Sao Paulo, she has worked in a broad range of institutions, affecting positive change in Brazil since 1977.
Her first position involved coordinating the performance companies that integrate the Theatro Municipal of São Paulo, the Capital’s opera house, heading the artistic and administrative activities of the Symphony Orchestra of Sao Paulo City, the City Ballet, the Opera Choir, the Paulistano Choir and the Sao Paulo String Quartet.
Claudia went on to work as Artistic Administrator for the Mozarteum Brasileiro (1981 – 1985) and worked as Director of Cultural Relations for the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (1987 – 1994) where she was responsible for the planning and production of 67 exhibits and 114 courses.
As Executive Director of the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra – Osesp - she designed and structured the management of the ensemble, implementing a pioneering model of public administration for the cultural sector in Brazil (1997-2002). The new structure of the OSESP included:
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the training of core staff bodies to attend to the specific needs of the symphonic ensemble;
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the conceptualisation and installation of the Centre for Musical Research, the Volunteer and Subscriber Services;
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the opening of Sala São Paulo;
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the creation of the first Educational Programming Department in a Latin American orchestra;
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the launching of Criadores do Brasil, the orchestra’s editorial publisher in 2002.
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the production of both the Orchestra’s 2000 Latin American tour and its 2002 US tour, during which 22 concerts were performed in 18 cities.
Claudia was named advisor to the State Governor of Sao Paulo in 2003. Subsequently, she became Special Advisor to the Secretariat of Culture at Sao Paulo City Hall (2004-2006). In 2007 she became Music Advisor to the Secretariat of Culture at São Paulo State Government, spearheading a major redesign of the state’s music education system that includes: two Music Schools (2.400 students), a Music Festival, a Youth Orchestra, a Youth Choir, a Youth Band, a Youth Jazz Band and a program in music education for more than fifty thousand kids and teenagers in more than 200 music centres. She also was leading as Chief Consultant the project of Luz Cultural Complex, focused in the construction of a performing arts centre designed by Herzog & DeMeuron.
From 2010 to 2013 she was Chief Consultant for Music at the Public TV and Radio of São Paulo State (Radio and TV Cultura). The broadcasting of Proms in 2012 started the participation of Radio Cultura at EBU as a guest member.
Since May 2014 she is Advisor for Culture to the President of the University of São Paulo.
As independent curator, Claudia conceived the Festival SESC de Música de Câmara in São Paulo in 2014. The Festival is a biannual program sponsored and presented by SESC in different cultural cities that received more than 120 concerts in its three editions.
Consultant for British Council Brasil in projects related to education in orchestra’s management, Claudia Toni also serves on the boards of the Alliance Française, Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea of São Paulo, Brasil-Turkish Cultural Center and Ilumina Festival. She served the board of International Society for the Performing Arts – ISPA from 2006 to 2015.
In 2010 she was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite National of France. Claudia Toni was honored in January 2016 by ISPA with the International Citation of Merit for lifetime achievement in the arts.
Claudia devotes part of her time as a volunteer coach of young musicians and managers involved in cultural institutions in Brasil.
British Council
See an interview with Claudia for the British Council's 2012-2016 Transform programme.
"Here [in Brazil], when the orchestra makes an educational project it works like this: a bus full of kids arrives, they sit there, watch a guy turned with his back to them and who doesn’t talk to them, plays a song that doesn’t have lyrics for two hours, with no break. They will never want to go back to that boredom! You don’t tell them what that is and why they are there. Outside Brazil organisations realized that if they didn’t include educational projects, they wouldn’t get sponsorship anymore. The cultural organisations here don’t go after that. It needs to include the community itself, the orchestra needs to stop being this white elephant, indivisible, on a stage where a small amount of people can sit to watch them."
