Biography – 450 words
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Biography - [ 100 words | 250 words | 450 words | 850 words ] [ Curriculum Vitae ]
JOHN ESTACIO
Born April 8, 1966, Newmarket, Ontario
John Estacio has served as Composer in Residence for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic, the Calgary Opera, and Pro Coro Canada. These residencies yielded several orchestral and choral works including his opera Filumena.
CBC Records released Frenergy, the Music of John Estacio, featuring several of the orchestral works Estacio composed during his residencies in Edmonton and Calgary. This CD was nominated for two JUNO awards, including a nomination for Outstanding Classical Composition. The Frenergy CD also received the Western Canadian Music Award Outstanding Classical Recording Award. His string quartet, Test Run, which he composed for the Banff International String Quartet competition, was also nominated for a JUNO. In 2008 he received an AMPIA Award for his first film score for The Secret of the Nutcracker.
His most recent opera, Frobisher, with a libretto by John Murrell, premiered in Calgary and Banff in 2007. His first opera, Filumena, again with Murrell, premiered in 2003 and was also produced at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa April 2005, at the 2005 Banff Summer Arts Festival, and at the Edmonton Opera November 2005. Filumena was filmed for television and received its national television premiere in 2006.
Estacio's works are frequently performed; in the autumn of 2009, his works have received performances by the St. Louis Symphony, Allentown Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Quebec Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Edmonton Symphony and by orchestras in Kamloops, Oakville, and the Okanagan. During the past summer, the National Youth Orchestra of the Americas toured the US and Canada with his Bootlegger's Tarantella. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, along with acclaimed tenor Ben Heppner, recently toured Europe with his arrangements of Seven Songs of Jean Sibelius. He is currently finishing his third opera, Lillian Alling, to be premiered by the Vancouver Opera in 2010.
Estacio studied music and composition at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of British Columbia. He attained national recognition after receiving an award in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Canadian Composers Competition in 1992. Shortly thereafter, he began an eight-year residency with the Edmonton Symphony. In addition to writing music during his residencies, he has also written for the Vancouver Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and the CBC Radio Orchestra.
He currently resides in Edmonton and recently completed his cantata The Houses Stand Not Far Apart commissioned by the Vancouver Bach Choir, the Grand Philharmonic, Chorus Niagara, and the Richard Eaton Singers. He also composed Triptych, a sinfonietta for the Victoria Symphony premiered this past spring in Duncan, B.C..
To learn more about John Estacio, please visit him at his website: www.johnestacio.com.
