Cynthia Woods, Conductor

“intelligent, out of the ordinary programming”

The Boston Musical Intelligencer, Vance R. Koven, May 19th 2010

Boston based conductor Cynthia Woods emerged as a conductor to notice from the moment she began her career in her twenties. 
Within a year of finishing her studies, the Orchestras of the Worcester Consortium, invited her to lead their combined forces of 119 in Stravinsky’s daunting masterwork, Le Sacre de Printemps.  That same year Ms. Woods was one of the elite few to be a finalist, considered by Leonard Slatkin for the National Conducting Institute at the Kennedy Center.  Since then, Ms. Woods has become an
established voice in the conducting community.  She is the Music Director of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, a busy guest conductor and a strong advocate of living composers and new music.

Ms. Woods’ has traveled extensively across two continents as a guest conductor, performing coast to coast in the U.S. and in countries such as England, Scotland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.  Ensembles with which Ms. Woods has appeared include the Grande Rhonde Symphony, the Plevin Philharmonic, the Hot Springs Music Festival Chamber Orchestra, the Salisbury Singers, the Varna Symphony Orchestra, the College of the Holy Cross Chamber Orchestra, the Greater Newburgh Symphony and the Master Singers of Worcester.

Woods’ commitment to new music spans her entire career.  As a student she had the opportunity to work and learn from icons such as George Crumb and John Corigliano.  As a Music Director she has worked to make contemporary music fresh, approachable and exciting to her orchestras and audiences.  Recent highlights include: a two day lecture /performance residency with Joan Tower joining the CSO for the Boston premiere of her Concerto for Violin and Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Peter Zazofsky as its soloist; CSO’s 35th anniversary commission and premiere of Emerald Waltz by Rome Prize winner Lisa Bielawa and the premiere of a new arrangement of Alec Templeton’s Pocket Size Sonata by Larry Wolfe of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Ms. Woods also had the honor of being chosen to be a Fellow at the prestigious Atlantic Center for the Arts to expand her study into New Music techniques.

Ms. Woods is comfortable in all idioms of the podium, having experience in opera, choral, chamber orchestra and full orchestra. Her opera debut was made in a series of sold out performances of Bernstein’s On the Town at the Center for Performing Arts, Rheinbeck NY.  This past season Ms. Woods conducted her first Beethoven’s 9th Symphony to standing ovations and acclaim with Boston Globe’s 1995 “Musician of the Year” baritone Robert Honeysucker heading up an all star cast of singers.

Ms. Woods began her musical studies as a violinist, focusing heavily on chamber music.   She received the University of Colorado at Boulder Quartet Scholarship which allowed her to study with the Grammy winning Takacs String Quartet .  Additional studies with members of the Muir String Quartet and the Stanford String Quartet followed.  Eventually she turned her attention to the podium earning an M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Hartt School of Music where she received the Dean’s Talent Scholarship for all three consecutive years of her study.  Her major teachers include Michael Morgan, Harold Farberman and Daniel Lewis with additional study with Gunther Schuller and David Effron.

Ms. Woods was appointed to her current position in 2006.

“The first piece played was “Upbeat!” composed by Ellen Taaffe Zwillich, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning musician…conducted by Cynthia Woods the outcome was dynamic and immersing.”

John Galigour, Sun Valley News, OR, 2/25/2001


Please see:
www.CynthiaWoods.org for additional information.