Cynthia Millar - ondes martenot
Cynthia Millar studied the Ondes Martenot first with John Morton in England and later with Jeanne Loriod, who with her brother in law, Olivier Messiaen, has done so much to bring the instrument to a wider public. 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 orchestras and in November 2009 she gave her 100th performance of the work with the Monte Carlo Orchestre Philharmonique. She has worked with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis, André Previn, Esa Pekka Salonen, Edo de Waart, Leonard Slatkin, Yan Pascal Tortelier, David Roberston, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst, Mark Wigglesworth, Mattias Bammert, Donald Runnicles, Ilan Volkov, Mariss Jansons, Yakov Krietzburg and Gustavo Dudamel. She has also performed in the premieres of Turangalila in Scotland, Singapore, and Washington DC, and in 1996, she played in the first performances in Los Angeles for more than twenty years with Esa Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Other performances have included appearances at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Edinburgh Festival as well as regular appearances at the BBC Promenade Concerts, and with orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, the Sydney and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, the BBC Orchestras, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lyon.
Other repertoire includes Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake which she has performed 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; Varese 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 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 then again with the Netherlands Chamber Choir.
Her work as a performer in over one hundred film and television scores, for composers including Elmer Bernstein, Richard Rodney Bennett, Maurice Jarre, Henry Mancini and Miklos Rozsa, was Cynthia Millar’s introduction to the world of film music. She gave the world premiere of Elmer Benstein’s Ondine at the Cinema in a special concert to celebrate the composers’ 80th birthday with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, London. She has also written a number of film scores herself, including the music for Arthur Penn’s ‘The Portrait’ starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall; Martha Coolidge’s ‘Three Wishes’ and Peter Yates’s ‘The Run of the Country’, Jason Freeland’s ‘Brown’s Requiem’, ‘A Storm in Summer’ directed by Robert Wise, and ‘Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister’ directed by Gavin Millar and staring Jonathan Pryce. For television she composed the music for a major documentary series ‘Stephen Hawking’s Universe’ for BBC/WNET.
Most recent engagements include Turangalila with the London, Sydney, Saint Louis, Gothenburg and Iceland Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia, CBSO, Netherlands Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife, a European tour with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies at the Bath Festival, and Honegger’s Joan of Arc with the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Future engagements include Turangalila with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra with which she will also record the work for Hyperion.