Cynthia Millman Floyd

Millman Floyd, Cynthia

Cynthia (Gray) Millman Floyd (b Millman). Pianist, administrator, b Toronto 13 Mar 1938; ARCT 1958, Staatsprüfung (State Academy, Vienna) 1963, Diplomprüfung (State Academy, Vienna) 1968. Cynthia Millman Floyd studied in Ottawa with Gladys Barnes and Frederick Karam, and won first prizes in the Ottawa Music Festival (now Kiwanis Festival of Music and Dance) 1954-9, and gold medals at the CNE in 1958. In Vienna she studied with Walter Panhofer (chamber music), Erwin Ratz (form analysis), and Dieter Weber and Bruno Seidlhofer (piano) at the Academy of Music, where she won the graduating prize. Millman Floyd has performed as a recitalist in Ontario, Manitoba and elsewhere; as soloist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Nepean Symphony Orchestra, the Ottawa Philharmonic, and others; and in chamber works with such musicians as Gisela Depkat, Mary Lou Fallis, Alan Molitz, James Morton, and Walter Prystawski. She has given many workshops and masterclasses on piano pedagogy including, in 1988, three weeks of masterclasses as 'visiting foreign expert' at the conservatory of music in Tianjin, China, as part of a tour with Ingemar Korjus and Sandra Graham. In the mid-1990s Millman Floyd began to specialize in the fortepiano, and gave concerts and workshops on this instrument, eg at the Scotia Festival of Music (2001) and the Boston Early Music Festival (1997). She has been an active adjudicator, eg for the Sir Ernest MacMillan Foundation.

From 1970 to 2003 Millman Floyd taught in the Department of Music at the University of Ottawa, and was appointed its chairman in 1983; she became vice-dean of the university's Faculty of Arts in 1991. After 2003, she was a visiting professor there. She is married to former National Arts Centre Orchestra oboist Rowland Floyd.