Blake-Anthony Johnson has served as the CEO of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation since January 2025. His accolades include the Titan Awards 2025, recognition on the New Orleans CityBusiness 2025 New Executives Power List, and a feature in The New Orleans 500, an annual publication from Biz New Orleans highlighting the business leaders shaping the region’s economy. Previous honors include the 2023 Harvard Business School Club Chicago Fellowship, the 2023 Black Men in Excellence Award, MusicalAmerica.com’s 2022 Top 30 Professionals, Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 (2022), Chicago Tribune’s 2022 Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music, the 2022 Brevard Music Center Distinguished Alumni Award, the Chicago Urban League 2022 Impact Fellowship (awarded by The University of Chicago Booth School of Business), and the 2022 Chicago Community Trust Daniel Burnham Fellowship (awarded by Leadership Greater Chicago). He has also received multiple proclamations from the City of Chicago for his civic and cultural service.

Recognized as a “business heavyweight” by Crain’s Chicago Business, Johnson has extended the artistic, commercial, and technological boundaries of cultural institutions through creative leadership and innovation. With a focus on community-centric, multi-disciplinary, and educational initiatives, he has been applauded for his civic engagement and transformational leadership. He was the first African American executive to lead a nationally renowned orchestra and is among the first professional musicians to lead both a major symphony and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Foundation. He has served on numerous national boards and advisories, including The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the League of American Orchestras, and Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music Dean’s Advisory Circle.

From 2020 to 2025, Johnson was President & CEO of Chicago Sinfonietta, a cultural leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Under his leadership, the orchestra expanded its reach, launched an Artist-in-Residence initiative, strengthened the Freeman Fellowship program, and secured the historic Auditorium Theatre as its home venue. He introduced the nationally acclaimed Pay-What-You-Can Program—praised by The New York Times and widely adopted by classical organizations across the country. Additionally, he guided the organization through its first major tour in over a decade, significantly expanding its national profile and funding base.

During his time in Chicago, Johnson served as Co-Chair of the City’s Cultural Advisory Council, where he helped shape arts policy and expand access to cultural programming. He also held multiple leadership roles with World Business Chicago and participated in more than half a dozen mayoral delegations—most recently as part of the City’s Tokyo-Osaka delegation—advancing trade, investment, and strategic partnerships with senior federal officials and business leaders. In addition, he chaired the Toronto Sister City Committee and contributed as a member of Chicago Sister Cities International, a division of World Business Chicago, the City’s public-private economic development agency. He was a board member for The Sir Georg Solti Foundation U.S. and a committee member for World Business Chicago, focusing on economic and cultural development.

Johnson also served as Faculty at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, a member of the Recording Academy, and guest lecturer at both the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He completed two terms on the National Endowment for the Arts Music Panel, served on the Steering Committee of the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative (2020–2023), and judged Chicago’s 2021 3Arts Awards. His advisory and trustee work has spanned numerous organizations across the arts, healthcare, and social equity sectors, including the AIRIE National Advisory Committee (Artists in Residence in the Everglades), the San Francisco Conservatory of Music / San Francisco Symphony’s Emerging Black Composers Project Evaluation Committee, and the Chicago Live! Advisory Committee at Navy Pier.

Before transitioning into arts administration, Johnson had a distinguished career as a cellist, performing globally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral principal. He has appeared with ensembles such as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Chineke! Orchestra, and Sinfonietta Polonia, and performed at the Spoleto Festival USA (as principal), Brevard Music Festival, and Aix-en-Provence Festival in France. He has recorded works by Richard Danielpour, Claudio Gabriele, and Poul Ruders, and has been featured on NPR’s From the Top and What Makes It Great? broadcasts. His musician-specific accolades include the World Competition Audience Choice Award, MTNA Young Artist Competition, Daniel Rains Concerto Competition, Brevard Music Festival Concerto Competition, and the Jean Keller Heard Prize for musical excellence.

A protégé of Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony, Johnson’s early leadership and education work began while he was a student at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, where he founded the Classical Cake concert series to introduce new audiences to classical music and later launched the Music Education for Youth Initiative to connect university musicians with underserved communities. Earlier in his career, he served as Assistant Personnel Manager for the Spoleto Festival USA and Director of Learning and Community for the Louisville Orchestra. In 2019, he oversaw the Violins of Hope project in Louisville, managing 48 restored Holocaust-era instruments for 16 community performances and exhibitions—a project that became an international model for cross-sector cultural collaboration.

Johnson holds a Bachelor of Music from Vanderbilt University, a Master of Music from Cleveland State University, and a Professional Studies Certificate from Manhattan School of Music. He is also an alumnus of the Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management (SPNM) Executive Education program at Harvard Business School. He trained under distinguished mentors including Felix Wang, Bryan Dumm, and Alan Harrell.

As a speaker and facilitator, Johnson has delivered closing remarks at the Collision Conference (Toronto Stock Exchange) and spoken at multiple League of American Orchestras’ National and Mid-Winter Conferences, including serving as emcee for the 76th National Conference.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Johnson remains committed to advancing the intersection of arts, education, and community impact—championing creative excellence as a catalyst for civic and cultural transformation.