Cynthia Johnston Turner

Cynthia Johnston Turner is a conductor and clinician in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Canada. She is currently on the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, having formerly served on the faculty of Cornell University, where she directed the Wind Ensemble, Wind Symphony and chamber winds. Johnston Turner is guest conductor with the Syracuse Society for New Music and principal guest conductor with the Austrian Festival Orchestra and Paris Lodron Ensemble in Salzburg.
A Canadian, Johnston Turner completed her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees at Queen's University and her Master of Music in music education and conducting at the University of Victoria. Touring with her ensembles inspired her master's thesis on the musical and personal transformations that occur on tours, and her D.M.A. thesis at the Eastman School of Music centered on Dialogues and Entertainments by William Kraft. At Eastman, she was the recipient of the Eastman Graduate Teaching Award in conducting, where she studied with Donald Hunsberger, Mark Scatterday, and Neil Varon. She was nominated for the Canadian Prime Minister's Leadership in Teaching Award and received the National Leadership in Education Award (Readers Digest Foundation), the Excellence in Education Award (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation), and the Marion Drysdale Leadership Among Women Teachers Award (also from OSSTF).
Service is an important component of Dr. Johnston Turner's career. Since January 2006, she has led the Cornell Wind Ensemble on performing and service-learning tours to Costa Rica and Panama that include performances and masterclasses across the two countries and the donation of instruments (over 250 to date) to a rural 'escuela de musicas.'
In 2014, she accepted the appointment of Professor of Conducting and Director of Bands at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia.

• "Educators Can’t Become Dinosaurs": USA Today OpEd, 2014
• “Another Perspective: crowd-sourcing our ensemble rehearsals,” Music Educators Journal, Dec. 2013
• "Augenblick" (Albany, 2012), Cornell Wind Ensemble, available on iTunes and Amazon
• “What’s With the Russian Soldier? How Acting and Movement Classes Inform my Conducting, Canadian Winds/Vents Canadiens: the Journal of the Canadian Band Association, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2011
• "Leaving the Safe Harbor: Music, Social, and Ensemble Adventures," International Journal of the Humanities, 2009
• "Serendipity" 2-CD release with the Society for New Music (Innova, 2010), available on iTunes and Amazon.com (Winner of 2010 "Sammy" award)
• Canzon 26 by Pietro Lappi, arranged for Wind Ensemble, Tierolff Musiekcentrale, Netherlands, 2009
• Nine sili nebesniye (Rejoice now heavenly powers) by Alexander Sheremetiev/arranged for trombone choir by C. Johnston Turner, Tierolff Musiekcentrale, Netherlands, 2009
• "Dialogues and Entertainments by William Kraft: An Interpretive Analysis." Journal of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles 11 (2004).
• "The Wind Band Concert: A Bleak Future?" Journal of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles 10 (2003).
• "Music and Journey: Personal and Ensemble Transformation on the Band Tour." Canadian Music Educator 43/2 (2002).