“Conducted by Cynthia Woods, the Zwillich was dynamic and immersing…” exclaimed John Galigour of the Sun Valley News, after witnessing the Pacific Coast premier of Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Taffe Zwillich’s work Upbeat with the Grande Rhonde Symphony.

A violinist by training, Cynthia Woods turned her attention to the podium in her early twenties and opportunities soon followed. Her career has taken her across the country and oversees, performing with groups such as the Plevin Philharmonic, the Rocky Mountain Chamber Players, The Transylvania Symphony Orchestra, the Greater Newburgh Symphony and the Varna Philharmonic.

Recent accomplishments include the Boston premier of Joan Tower’s Concerto for Violin with Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Peter Zazofsky and the premier of a new arrangement of Alec Templeton’s Pocket Size Sonata by Larry Wolfe of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Woods has also founded a new Summer Pops Concerts series featuring the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra hosted by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the heart of historical Harvard Square, along the Charles River.

Her opera debut was made in a series of sold out performances of Bernstein’s On the Town at the Reinbeck Center for the Performing Arts, New York. An advocate of contemporary American music, she has worked with some of today’s most significant composers including Joan Tower, John Corigliano and George Crumb and was chosen to be a Fellow at the prestigious Atlantic Center for the Arts.

In addition to her experience as a guest conductor Ms. Woods has been the Music Director for the Boston Community Chamber Orchestra and the Artistic Director for the Worcester Youth Orchestras-the partnered youth orchestra of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Cynthia Woods was appointed the Music Director of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra in 2006.