Biography – 850 words
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JOHN ESTACIO
Born April 8, 1966, Newmarket, Ontario
Born to parents of Portuguese descent, John Estacio was born in Newmarket, Ontario and raised in the Holland Marsh. While growing up, John took private lessons on piano and accordion and cut his teeth in performance playing the church organ every Sunday. He developed a bug for composing in his teenage years creating soundtracks for short films that he and his school buddies created. He continued to work on his performance chops by playing trumpet and taking roles in high school musicals (Aurora High School 1980-85). But he knew composition was what his heart desired.
He attended Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario where he majored in composition, 1985-1989. While at WLU he studied composition with Glenn Buhr and Peter Hatch and piano with Boyd MacDonald. Between 1989-1991 he earned his Masters of Music at University of British Columbia where he studied composition with Stephen Chatman.
Shortly after graduating from UBC, he completed his first major orchestral work, Visoes da Noite, which became a finalist in the Winnipeg Symphony’s first Canadian Composers Competition (1992). His second place finish garnered him a prize that included a commission for a new orchestral work for the WSO, Saudades, which the orchestra premiered at their New Music Festival in the following year. The results from the WSO competition brought Estacio to the attention of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
In 1992 the ESO was searching for their first Composer in Residence. Estacio was initially hired to be in residence for ten weeks. However, this residency eventually lasted 8 seasons (1992-2000). During his residency in Edmonton, Estacio created several orchestral works to be premiered by the ESO. He also participated in various outreach activities including school concerts, audience outreach programs, and the Young Composers Project that he started in 1995. In 1998, Estacio was also in residence with Pro Coro Canada and created two works for the choir, Ziggurat (1998) with a libretto by Timothy J. Anderson, and Eulogies (2000) with text by Val Brandt. Eulogies received the Association of Canadian Choral Conductor’s National Choral Awards for Outstanding Choral Composition.
During his tenure with the ESO, he created A Farmer’s Symphony which the orchestra performed on their Northern Lights Tour in 1994 with stops in Yellowknife, Inuvik and Whitehorse. In 1997 he composed a Triple Concerto for the opening gala concert of the Winspear Centre for Music in Edmonton. That same year, he also received the Syncrude Award for innovative artistic direction for the Young Composers Project. He composed Frenergy (1998) which has become one of his often performed compositions. Several of the works Estacio composed during his residency can be found on the album titled Frenergy; the Music of John Estacio, released on CBC Records and performed by the ESO and Mario Bernardi.
In 2000, Estacio moved to Calgary and started a residency with the Calgary Philharmonic and the Calgary Opera. During his residency, he continued many of the projects in Calgary that he had started in his previous residency with Edmonton. He composed Solaris, Bottlegger’s Tarantella and Spring’s Promise for the CPO. His most notable achievement of the Calgary tenure was his opera Filumena which he created with librettist John Murrell. He composed Filumena between 2001-2003; it premiered in Calgary February 1, 2003. The opera has since gone on to be performed twice at the Banff Summer Festival (2003, 2005), the National Arts Centre, and the Edmonton Opera. It was filmed for television and broadcast on the CBC network in March 2006. His second opera, Frobisher, again with John Murrell, premiered in Calgary and Banff in 2007,
During his tenures in Edmonton and Calgary, he also composed for other performers and ensembles including the Toronto Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Banff International String Quartet Competition (2001), Nora Bumanis and Julia Shaw, Gwen Hoebig and David Moroz, and the Penderecki String Quartet. His compositions have been performed by several of the major orchestras in Canada, as well as orchestras in Manila, the Houston Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and the Rochester Philharmonic.
In 2003 he received his first JUNO Nomination for Best Classical Composition for his string quartet Test Run, and the Frenergy CD, was nominated for two JUNO awards in 2005. He received SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award in 2004, 2005 and 2007. He has also received Young Composer Awards from SOCAN and PROCAN in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1994.
In 2006 he created arrangements of Seven Songs by Jean Sibelius for performance by Ben Heppner and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. His arrangements were performed in the fall of 2007 by Mr. Heppner with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen in London and Paris and again in the spring of 2008 by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.
His currently resides in Edmonton, Alberta and is at work on his second symphony (Victoria Symphony) and his third opera with John Murrell, Lillian Alling, to be premiered by the Vancouver Opera in 2010. He also completed his first film score for the upcoming The Secret of the Nutcracker and a cantata for the Vancouver Bach Choir, the Richard Eaton Singers, Chorus Niagara and the Grand Philharmonic Choir.
To learn more about John Estacio, please visit him at his website: www.johnestacio.com.
