The San Diego Symphony has announced the appointment of MARIA CECILIA ARAUJO as vice president of education and community engagement, and CLEMENT SO as director of artistic planning. In addition, the orchestra announced that AURELIE DESMARAIS is serving as a consultant in the role of senior advisor in the artistic planning department.
Maria Cecilia Araujo was most recently a teaching artist with the Miami Music Project. At the San Diego Symphony, Araujo will be responsible for educational programs for all ages as well as developing alliances with cultural and community organizations. At the Miami Music Project, Araujo worked to support social transformation in under-served communities. Prior to that, Araujo was president and CEO of Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas. She spent the early 2000s as the vice president of education and community engagement for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and prior to that was the head of the music department and music instructor for the United Nations International School New York.
Clement So joins the San Diego Symphony as director of artistic planning after spending more than ten years with the 92nd Street Y in New York City as artistic administrator. So collaborated on the programming and artistic planning, booking and producing annual concert seasons of over 80 classical, jazz, American songbook, family, multi-disciplinary and special fundraising events. He was also the manager for special projects. Prior to the 92nd Street Y, So was an assistant at the Yale University Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. So will work on the San Diego Symphony’s artistic planning for the winter and summer seasons, including Jazz @ the Jacobs, chamber music, City Lights, and Bayside Summer Nights.
Aurelie Desmarais will work with San Diego Symphony staff while a search for a new vice president of artistic planning is undertaken. Desmarais was director of artistic planning for the Houston Symphony for 21 years, and before that worked with the Toronto Symphony and the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa. At the San Diego Symphony, she will work with Nancy Chalifour, who has been guiding the programming of the Jacobs Masterworks series for two seasons and will continue to work on the 2018-19 season.
Posted October 20, 2017
