“I’m grateful to be working in a country that values the arts”: Why Mark Williams left Cleveland to run the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Who: Mark Williams, 45, chief executive officer, TSO
Known for: Bringing classical music to the people Moved from: Cleveland Orchestra in April of 2022

When Trump installed himself as chair of the Kennedy Center this past February, his hostile takeover sent a chill through the American performing arts community. The move was unprecedented, and it crystallized the growing concern that no institution was safe, not even long-standing bipartisan ones. It wasn’t the first time the president had sought to dictate whose art and culture matters—he’s been calling for the end of funding to both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities since his first term, seeding doubt and fear that have increased exponentially in 2025.

Related: Trump’s Loss, Toronto’s Gain—Meet the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries ditching the US and moving north

Mark Williams thinks a lot about who gets to have a voice in the arts. “I’m a six-foot-one Black gay man,” says the head of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, who moved to Toronto in 2022 after nine years at the Cleveland Orchestra. “I have to be very mindful of how I set myself up for success, about putting myself in situations where I will have a fair shake. I’m not what most people picture when they think ‘orchestra executive.’ But I don’t feel like I stick out in Toronto. What I see here is an incredibly progressive city with a diverse array of people who are flourishing in different fields. I felt like I could join that chorus.”

Williams had first visited Toronto in the summer of 2014, for his husband’s birthday, and over the years, the couple kept coming back—to visit museums, shop, eat and walk streets where they blended in. He loved the Cleveland Orchestra, where he’d worked as director of artistic planning and then as chief artistic and operations officer, but he knew that if he ever had the chance to make a permanent move to Toronto, he’d have to consider it. The new gig appealed for several reasons. It reunited him with his friend and former colleague Gustavo Gimeno, the TSO’s music director, whom he’d hired in 2015 to conduct at the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival—Gimeno’s American debut. Williams was also drawn to the TSO’s talent pool. Before moving into administration, he was a horn player and worked in artist management. His calling, he says, is to be the person who helps create the conditions under which great art can happen. Finally, he knew he could play a pivotal role in the TSO’s new mission: to connect with a larger cross-section of people, beating the rap that classical music is elitist. Related: “To be honest, I didn’t know who Drake was”—The conductor of the TSO on their recent collab with Toronto’s biggest hype man

In Williams’s office, there’s tangible proof of how seriously he takes that pursuit: an enormous poster of singer Jessye Norman—a Black opera icon who resisted categorization, famously quipping, “Pigeonholes are comfortable for pigeons.” Williams discovered Norman as a 12-year-old in Ohio, listening to a compilation of opera’s greatest hits. Desperate to know more about the singer with the extraordinary voice, he’d flipped through the CD’s booklet to find a beautiful Black woman staring back at him. Something in him shifted in that moment. She’s done it, he thought. Maybe I could do it too.

Even now, that realization is remarkable to Williams, who grew up in a family that adored music—if it was R&B, soul or gospel. “I didn’t come from an environment that would have led anyone to believe I would run an orchestra one day, or play classical music, or even be interested in classical music.” But what once seemed like a liability is now a superpower: “I sometimes have this feeling that just by walking into a room, I already change perspectives about the art that we make.” In Toronto, he has the opportunity to proselytize for his art form unconstrained by shifting political whims. “The current administration is weaponizing NEA grants against equity and inclusion and targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian. When I look at the attacks on cultural institutions in the US, I’m even more grateful to be working in a country where governments of all political stripes acknowledge the value that the arts bring to a vibrant and thriving society.”