Cynthia Millar

Cynthia Millar’s most recent performances include concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Nashville Symphony Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra. Millar’s most performed work, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, makes a spectacular post-pandemic return with some of the top orchestras during the 2022/23 Season. She is performing with the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Brussels Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra.

In 2016 Millar premiered the Ondes Martenot part specially written for her by Thomas Adès in his opera The Exterminating Angel at the Salzburg Festival, and subsequently at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Danish Opera in March 2018. The 2016/17 Season also saw her take part in a ten-concert tour of the Turangalîla-Symphonie with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel, beginning in Caracas and culminating in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Millar studied the Ondes Martenot with John Morton in England and Jeanne Loriod in France. Since her first performance of the Turangalîla-Symphonie at the 1986 BBC Proms with the National Youth Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder, she has played this piece around 200 times with some of the world’s leading conductors including Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, Paavo Järvi, Susanna Mälkki, Andrew Davis and Mariss Jansons.