Cynthia Millar studied the Ondes Martenot first with John Morton in England and later with Jeanne Loriod. Since she first performed the Turangalila-Symphonie at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London with Mark Elder and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, she has performed with many of the world’s leading conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis, André Previn, Esa Pekka Salonen, Edo de Waart, Yakov Kreitzburg, Leonard Slatkin, Yan Pascal Tortelier, David Roberston, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst, Mark Wigglesworth, Mattias Bammert, Donald Runnicles, Ilan Volkov, Mariss Jansons, and Gustavo Dudamel. Her many performances have included the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Edinburgh and Luzern Festivals as well as regular appearances at the BBC Promenade Concerts, and with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco, St Louis, and Cincinnati Symphonies, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, the Sydney, New Zealand and Singapore Symphonies, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, CBSO, the BBC Orchestras, Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmoniqe de Monte Carlo Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and Orquestra Sinfónica de Castilla y León. She has recorded Turangalila with the Bergen Symphony Orchestra conducted by Juanjo Mena for Hyperion.
Other repertoire includes Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher which in 2011 she performed in a series of concerts conducted by Marin Alsop at the Oregon Bach Festival and then with the Baltimore and London Symphony Orchestras; with Antonio Pappano and the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome; with David Robertson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra; with Libor Pešek and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms, and with David Zinman at the Aspen Festival; Varèse Equatorial with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas, and Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies with the Cleveland Orchestra and George Benjamin, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms conducted by David Robertson and with the same orchestra at the Barbican conducted by Donald Runnicles. She has recorded this work with the London Sinfonietta and Terry Edwards on the Virgin Classics Label, and also with the Netherlands Chamber Choir for Globe.
Cynthia Millar has played in over one hundred film and television scores, most notably for Elmer Bernstein (who encouraged her to learn the Ondes Martenot and for whom she also often recorded as piano soloist, notably in Far from Heaven), Richard Rodney Bennett, Maurice Jarre, Henry Mancini and Miklos Rozsa. She also writes for film, television and theatre and her work in this field includes scores for films by Arthur Penn, Robert Wise, Martha Coolidge and Peter Yates.
Most recent performances include Turangalila with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Seattle Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, London Symphony Orchestra, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and on tour in Europe, and Trois petites liturgies with the Orchestra of La Monnaie and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester. The current season includes Turangalila with the Oslo Philharmonic conducted by Vasily Petrenko, the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi, and on tour with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel.
