Toby Cruse enjoys a varied career. Originally a full-time musician, he moved into the entertainment business in 2008 and has subsequently built Worldwide Entertainment into a global operation, producing and promoting concerts and theatre shows, and booking and managing talent.
Toby has promoted many of the major British concert venues, including Cadogan Hall (London), the London Palladium (London), the indigO2 (London), St David’s Hall (Cardiff), the Bridgewater Hall (Manchester), the Royal Concert Hall (Glasgow), Town Hall (Leeds), Victoria Hall (Stoke-on-Trent), Fairfield Halls (Croydon) and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club (London), and produced in London’s West End and on Broadway. He regularly brings international talent into the UK as well as exporting productions to Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the USA, and has programmed entertainment for national and international sporting events.
In 2019, Toby set up the West End School of Theatre (WEST) which has presented courses in London and Beijing, with plans to roll out across Asia, enabling aspiring performing arts students to receive training from stars of theatre. In 2021, he co-founded CentreStage.tv, a streaming platform for the arts, based at Pinewood Studios, with TV executives Thea Cole and Jason Shepherd. Toby sits on the board of MadBop, a technology startup in the NFT and metaverse events space. He is actively involved with a number of charities and has supported the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and International Golf for Youth since 2005.
Toby has worked on a wide variety of productions in London’s West End and on tour, both as musical director and pianist/keyboard player. As a session musician, he has appeared alongside artists including Kylie Minogue, Dina Carroll, Michael Ball, Katherine Jenkins, Josh Groban, Hayley Westenra, Jonathan Ansell, Laura Wright, Michael Feinstein, Shirley Jones and The Real Thing. Originally trained as a classical pianist, Toby has won competitions and worked throughout the UK and internationally as an accompanist/repetiteur. He has performed for royalty on many occasions, including at an annual royal gala dinner at Windsor Castle.
In 2012, Toby reformed and conducted the British Sinfonia in a concert to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and has since conducted other major orchestras in the UK and overseas, including the Manchester Camerata at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. He has recently been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Las Vegas Symphony Orchestra and made his debut in that role at London’s Cadogan Hall in June 2022.
