John Murrell may refer to:

• John Murrell (bandit), 19th century river bandit
• John Murrell (playwright), 1990s author and playwright

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

John Estacio in 2008

John Estacio (born April 8, 1966) is a contemporary Canadian composer.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Estacio was born in Newmarket, Ontario. Raised in the farming community of the Holland Marsh, Ontario, Estacio took piano and accordion lessons, and played church organ every Sunday. As a teenager, he created soundtracks for short student films, played trumpet, and performed in high school productions of Broadway musicals.

He majored in composition at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario studying with Glenn Buhr and Peter Hatch. He earned his post-graduate degree at the University of British Columbia where he studied composition with Stephen Chatman.

In 1992, his first major orchestral work, Visoes da Noite, won second-prize in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s Canadian Composers Competition. Saudades for orchestra was premiered at the WSO’s New Music Festival in 1993.

From 1992 to 2000, Estacio was Composer in Residence of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. During his residency, Estacio created several orchestral works, participated in novel audience outreach programs, and created the Young Composers Project. A Farmer’s Symphony (1994), Borealis (1997), Flights of Fancy (1999), Frenergy (1998), Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello (1997), Variations on a Memory (1995), Victims of Us All (1996), Wondrous Light (1997) and The Twins and the Monster (2001) a children’s tale for actress and orchestra with text by Tololwa M. Mollel, were all written for the ESO.

From 2000 to 2003, Estacio was Composer in Residence with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Opera. He composed Solaris (2000), Bootlegger’s Tarantella (2001) and Spring’s Promise (2004) for the orchestra, and between 2001 and 2003 he wrote the opera Filumena (based on the life of Filumena Lassandro) with librettist John Murrell. Premiered in Calgary, the opera has been performed at the Banff Centre, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, and by the Edmonton Opera, where it was filmed for television broadcast on the CBC television network.

Estacio also been commissioned to write works for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and the Penderecki String Quartet. His music has been performed by all the major Canadian orchestras, as well as internationally.

In 2003 the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and conductor Mario Bernardi recorded six of Estacio’s major orchestral compositions. Released in 2004, the compact disc Frenergy was nominated for two Juno Awards. In 2004 the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Geoffrey Moull recorded Variations on a Memory for a new CD that was also nominated for a Juno Award and became the best-selling disc of the Canadian Music Centre in 2005. Estacio received SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award in 2004, 2005, and 2007, as well as Young Composer Awards from SOCAN and PROCAN in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1994.

Recent works include orchestrations of Seven Songs by Jean Sibelius for tenor Ben Heppner and the score of The Secret of The Nutcracker for a CBC television broadcast in December 2008. He currently resides in Edmonton, and recently completed his second opera, Frobisher (based on the life of Martin Frobisher), premiered in Calgary on January 27, 2007. The Houses Stand Not Far Apart, a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Vancouver Bach Choir and Edmonton's Richard Eaton Singers, and set to poetry by Calgary author John Murrell, was premiered in March 2008. Other upcoming commissions include a symphony for the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, and an opera for the Vancouver Opera.

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• John Estacio’s website
• Filumena website
• Canadian Music Centre website
• Review of Estacio's opera Lillian Alling

Frédérique Vézina (born c. 1977) is a Canadian operatic soprano. Vézina gained recognition when she made her Canadian Opera Company debut in 2002–2003 as Lisa and Mascha in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades.^[1] Critics hailed the arrival of a major presence on the operatic stage.^[2] Critic Robert Everett-Green of The Globe and Mail praised her "big Act III aria" as "eloquent testimony to the character's own addiction to emotional gambling."^[3] She was cast in the Canadian debut of The Handmaid's Tale in 2004.^[4] She was featured as Ellen Orford in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes^[1] and Belinda in Dido and Aeneas. Vézina played Filumena at the National Arts Centre 28 April 2005 and 30 April.^[5]

Born in Montreal,^[6] Vézina attended the F.A.C.E. high school for performing arts,^[7] and graduated from CÉGEP Vanier College.^[1] Vézina completed a Bachelor of Music Degree at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University^[1] in 2002.^[4] She placed first for three consecutive years at the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition (1996, 1997, and 1999) and was awarded the Most Promising Singer prize in 1997.^[8] In 2002, at the Trois-Rivières Symphony competition, she was awarded the Grand Prize as well as a recital broadcast on CBC Radio.^[1] Vézina placed first at the National Music Festival competition in Calgary.^[1] She was a Metropolitan Opera semi-finalist in 2004 and a winner of the Début Inc Young Artists Competition.^[1]

See also[link]

32x28px	Music of Canada portal
	Opera portal

• Music of Canada
• List of Canadian musicians

References[link]

Citations

External links[link]

• Frédérique Vézina at Don Wright Faculty of Music

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