Cynthia Johnston Turner

Cynthia is a faculty member with the summer Performing Arts Institute at Pennsylvannia's Wyoming Seminary, a guest conductor with the Syracuse Society of New Music, and an active festival adjudicator and clinician in both the United States and Canada. A Canadian, Cynthia completed her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees at Queens University and her Masters in Music Education and Conducting at the University of Victoria. Her accolades include nomination for the Canadian Prime Minister's Leadership in Teaching Award; National Leadership in Education Award (Readers Digest Foundation), Excellence in Education Award (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation); Marion Drysdale Leadership Among Women Teachers award (OSSTF) and Eastman Graduate Teaching Award in conducting.
At Cornell, Cynthia is the Director of Wind Ensembles, overseeing the Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band and CUWinds, a student-governed organization devoted to the promotion and performance of wind music. She has commissioned numerous new works for wind band and continues to actively promote commissions by today's leading composers, often involving collaborations with other art mediums.
The Wind Band Concert - Marketing Imagination 14th July 2005 (1:30 to 3:00pm) This paper is a follow-up study of a paper presented and published in 2003 based on data collected in a limited field study of American wind band conductors and composers. In the first study, fourteen questions designed to provide insight into questions concerning the future of the wind band concert were asked. After analyzing the responses, I organized the emerging themes under six headings: Audience Attendance; Advertising: who and where is our audience?; Educating and Connecting with our Audience; Engaging our audience: experimenting with the concert ritual; Wind Band Repertoire and Audience Connection; and Future Directions. While summarizing the data, the paper provided a sampling of the literature and explored conclusions. In 2003, I wondered if the future of the wind band concert was a bleak one. I concluded that if we attend to our audience through education and outreach, careful and balanced repertoire choices, creative marketing strategies, and vibrant concert-going experiences, it is not a bleak future. In many ways, the wind band and its repertoire can light the path to an exciting and important future of concert going. The brown-bag" session for 2005 will pursue these important variables by analyzing expanded data from a fresh survey with wind band conductors and composers around the globe. A "marketing imagination" approach will recast the variables in a more practical model.