Cindy O'Connor

Cindy O'Connor is a composer for film, TV, and theater living in Los Angeles. She began her career as a musical theater composer with All That He Was, winner of the Musical Theater Award in the Kennedy Center/ACTF Festival, published by Samuel French. It has since been produced in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and several theaters across the US. Other musical theater works include La Llorona/The Crying Woman (Off-Broadway) and 40 is the New 15, which was featured in the ASCAP/Disney workshop and produced at the NoHo Arts Center, winning a GLAAD Award nomination. A longtime collaborator with Mark Isham, Cindy spent her early years in the film music world arranging, programming, orchestrating, and singing on many Hollywood films and TV series, including Warrior, Dolphin Tale, The Mechanic, and Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia. Her feature film score for Forgiving the Franklins, "a religious sex comedy," premiered at Sundance, and Not Forgotten, a thriller starring Simon Baker, was released internationally. In 2017 she was selected as a composing fellow for the Sundance Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Ranch. In the TV world, Cindy has spent six years composing for ABC's Once Upon a Time, enjoying the chance to write magical fairy tale music for a live orchestra every week. Previously she spent two seasons writing moody electronic music for the Starz series Crash (one season as co-composer with Isham) and an "Irish garage band" score for Paul Haggis's series The Black Donnellys. As a performer, Cindy toured as a keyboard player and singer with rock superstar Pat Benatar for four years. She served as choir director/arranger for Petra Haden for concerts at the Ford, the Getty, and David Byrne's Meltdown Festival in London, where she also taught a master class for choral singers at the Southbank Centre. She works regularly as a session singer, both as a soprano soloist and ensemble member in film and TV. In 2016 she served as music director/pianist for the Nautilus Studio, a professional workshop for playwrights and composers. She is grateful every day for the chance to collaborate with talented artists to tell stories that touch people's hearts and explore the wonders of the human spirit.