John Greer
Director and Chair of Opera Studies; Collaborative Piano
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| Photo by Andrew Hurlbut |
John Greer is an active conductor, accompanist, vocal coach,
arranger, and composer. He has worked in recital with many of
Canada's most
talented young singers of his generation including Nancy Argenta,
Tracy Dahl, Rosemarie Landry, Linda McGuire, Kevin McMillian,
Mark Pedrotti, Catherine Robbin, and Michael Schade. He has also
worked with renowned American singers/teachers such as Carmen
Balthrop, Linda Mabbs, Carmen Pelton, Ashley Putnam, William
Sharp, Carol Webber, and Delores Ziegler. As faculty member
of the University
of Toronto opera division, Greer made his conducting debut in
1983, conducting numerous operas there including The Marriage
of Figaro, Gianni Schicchi, Tchaikovsky's Iolanta,
and Massenet's Le Portrait de Manon. He has also
developed and conducted works for Victoria's Opera Piccola,
Ottawa's Opera
Lyra, The Banff School of Fine Arts, the Toronto Gilbert and
Sullivan Society, and Mirvish Productions, the Hamilton Opera
in Ontario,
and the Canadian Opera Company. For five years, Greer was the
music director of the Eastman Opera Theatre in Rochester,
NY,
conducting operas such as Le Nozze di Figaro, Candide, Albert Herring, Patience, and The Turn
of the Screw. For ten 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, conducting several works, including the world premier
of David Liptak's chamber opera The Moon Singer. In the summer of 2008, Greer will join the music staff of Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY as head coach and continuo player for their production of Handel's Giulio Cesare.
Greer's
original compositions include ten song cycles,
as well as numerous works based on Canadian folk songs. 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 premiere. The opera was recently orchestrated
by Greer, and revived in Toronto before a European tour including
performances in Cologne and Amsterdam. Recent work includes his
second opera, an adapatation 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 Oscar F. Telgmann, commissioned by the
Toronto Operetta Theatre.
University of Manitoba and University of Southern California. Studies with Boyd McDonald, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Brooks Smith, Malcolm Hamilton, James Fraser-Craig, Boris Goldovsky, and David Effron. Former faculty of the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland.
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