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John Greer (USA)
John Greer is an active conductor, accompanist, vocal coach, arranger and composer and is heard in these capacities throughout Canada and abroad, in recital and on various CBC broadcasts. He is an honoured music graduate of both the University of Manitoba where he studied piano and composition with Boyd McDonald and of the University of Southern California where he was a student of pianists Gwendolyn Koldofsky and Brooks Smith and harpsichordist Malcolm Hamilton. His conducting instructors and mentors include James Fraser-Craig, Boris Goldofsky and David Effron. Mr. Greer has been fortunate to have worked in recital with many of Canada’s most talented young singers of his generation: Nancy Argenta, Tracy Dahl, Rosemarie Landry, Linda McGuire, Kevin McMillan, Mark Pedrotti, Catherine Robbin, and Michael Schade, to name a few, as well as the renowned American singers/teachers Carmen Balthrope, Linda Mabbs, Carmen Pelton, Ashley Putnam, William Sharp, Carol Webber and Delores Ziegler. As a faculty member of the University of Toronto opera division Mr. Greer made his conducting debut in 1983. He has conducted numerous operas there including The Marriage of Figaro, Gianni Schicchi, Tschaikowsky’s Iolanta and Massenet’s Le Portrait de Manon, as well as works for Victoria’s Opera Piccola, Ottawa’s Opera Lyra, The Banff School of Fine Arts, the Toronto Gilbert & Sullivan Society and Mirvish Productions. He has worked on numerous productions with Opera (Hamilton) Ontario and the Canadian Opera Company where he was chorus master for their 1989 productions of Un Ballo in Maschera and Il Barbiere di Siviglia and assistant conductor for their 1990 production of Suor Angelica. For the past decade, Mr. Greer has been the Music Director of the Eastman Opera Theatre in Rochester, New York where conducting credits include Le Nozze di Figaro, Candide, Albert Herring, Patience and The Turn of the Screw. and the Music Director of the Opera Studio at the University of Maryland. In 2003 he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory as Director of Opera studies, and recent conducting credits there include The Magic Flute and Massenet's Cendrillon. For nine seasons his summers have been occupied with his duties as General Manager and Head of Music Staff for the Janiec Opera Company at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina where his conducting credits include A Little Night Music, La Cenerentola, The Mikado, Naughty Marietta, The Gondoliers, Brigadoon, Sweeney Todd and the world premier of David Liptak’s chamber opera The Moon-Singer. Mr. Greer’s compositions include ten song cycles written for singers such as Catherine Robbin, Kevin McMillan, Mark Dubois, Tracy Dahl, Monica Whicher, and Adrianne Pieczonka and numerous works based on Canadian folk song. His children’s opera The Snow Queen, after Hans Christian Anderson, was written for the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus and has already had its American Premier. It has recently been orchestrated by the composer and revived in Toronto before a European tour including performances in Cologne and Amsterdam. Recent work includes his second opera, also commissioned by the CCOC, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale The Star-Child with librettist Ned Dickens and his revision and orchestration of the 1889 Canadian operetta Leo the Royal Cadet by O. F. Telgmann, commissioned by Toronto Operetta Theatre. www.newenglandconservatory.edu/faculty/greerj.html [ top ] © Festival 500 Designed by AppleCore Interactive |
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