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Claudia Hommel, La Médaille d’Or des Valeurs Francophone

Claudia Hommel s a Chicago-based cabaret singer, educator, and producer. Born in Paris, France, raised in Detroit, Michigan, and a graduate of Antioch College and Wayne State University, she founded the archives of the Detroit Institute of Arts before moving to New York City to pursue a career on stage. Since moving to Chicago to “do the work,” she tours, records, creates music-historical projects, and organizes cabaret festivals, master classes, outreach to schools, and tours to Paris. She specializes in cabaret shows and recitals of French chansons, art songs, and American Songbook standards.


For 25 years, she has been a crucial connector for a growing network of cabaret performers from the U.S. to France and beyond.  Her five recording albums and an art film celebrate Paris and French song, from the jazz age in Paris to postwar Americans in Paris, to jazz updating of mélodies by the classical composer Gabriel Fauré. The Illinois Arts Council has selected her as an ArtsTour rostered artist since 1998 and as Arts-in-Education artist since 1999.


Hommel is a co-founder and executive director of Working In Concert (WIC), a performing arts alliance of classical and cabaret artists supported in part by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She produces WIC initiatives including an annual citywide festival for Chicago Cabaret Week, an annual international exchange of Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion, and women-focused works of Bellissima Opera & Song.


She joined the faculty at DePaul University Community Music School in 2003 offering the weekly song interpretation workshop SongShop. Hommel is a member of actors’ unions Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA, and is a founding member of Chicago Cabaret Professionals. She enjoys a long working relationship with the American Association of Teachers of French, the Federation of Alliances Françaises USA, and the Paris Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International.

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