John Estacio - Frobisher Creative Team

John Estacio
Composer

John Estacio has served as composer-in-residence for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Pro Coro Canada, the Calgary Philharmonic, and Calgary Opera. These residencies yielded several orchestral and choral works including his opera Filumena. He has also written scores for productions of Othello and Twelfth Night at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton.

Estacio studied music and composition at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of British Columbia. He began his professional career after receiving an award in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Canadian Composers Competition in 1992, and shortly thereafter began an eight-year residency with the Edmonton Symphony. His choral work Eulogies received the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors' 1999 National Choral Award for Outstanding Choral Composition. He has also received the Syncrude Award for innovative artistic direction for the Young Composers Project which he initiated while at the Edmonton Symphony. Estacio has received numerous SOCAN Foundation Young Composers Awards and has twice received SOCAN's Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award for being the Canadian composer to have received the most performances and broadcasts of his works in 2003.

CBC Records recently released Frenergy, the Music of John Estacio, a CD 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 in 2005 for Outstanding Classical Recording Award. His string quartet composition, Test Run was also nominated for a Juno in 2003. Estacio’s opera, Filumena, with libretto by John Murrell, co-commissioned and co-produced by The Banff Centre and Calgary Opera premiered in Calgary and Banff in 2003. It was produced again at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in April 2005, at the 2005 Banff Summer Arts Festival, and at Edmonton Opera in November 2005. Filumena was filmed for television and was broadcast on the CBC in March of 2006.

In addition to writing for the Vancouver Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and the CBC Radio Orchestra, Estacio composed the pièce de concert for the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. During the 2005/06 season, his works were also performed by the Houston Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, the Royal Conservatory Orchestra, Orchestra London, Thunder Bay Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, and the Edmonton Symphony. Frobisher marks Estacio’s second opera with librettist John Murrell. They are also collaborating on a third original mainstage opera, with the working title Lillian Alling, commissioned by Vancouver Opera to premiere in the spring of 2010.