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Biography
JOHN GREER is a professional accompanist, vocal coach, conductor, arranger and composer, heard in these various capacities throughout Canada and abroad. 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 teachers have included James Fraser-Craig and Boris Goldofsky.
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, Michael Schade and Monica Whicher, 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 conductor and/or head coach Mr. Greer has prepared and performed over one hundred different operas and operettas, including several premier performances. As a faculty member of the University of Toronto opera division he made his conducting debut in 1983. Subsequently he worked 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. The majority of his career was spent as Music Director at various prestigious American music schools: at the Eastman Opera Theatre in Rochester, New York and the Opera Studio at the University of Maryland followed by a decade as Director and Chair of Opera Studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He was visiting Head Vocal Coach for the University of Kentucky voice and opera in Lexington, KY for three years and for ten seasons his summers were occupied with his duties as General Manager and Head of Music Staff for the Janiec Opera Workshop at the Brevard Music Centre in North Carolina. He has also served on the music staff of Glimmerglass and Chautauqua Opera companies. He currently resides in Toronto and teaches at the Glenn Gould School, the professional school of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto.
Mr. Greer's compositions include twelve song cycles written for Canadian singers such as Catherine Robbin, Kevin McMillan, Mark Dubois, Tracy Dahl, Monica Whicher, and Adrianne Pieczonka, numerous works based on Canadian folk song and many pieces of diversely-scored vocal chamber music. He has written two operas for the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus; The Snow Queen based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale with a libretto by Jeremy James Taylor of Britain's National Youth Music Theatre, and an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's fairy tale The Star-Child with librettist Ned Dickens. He revised and orchestrated the 1889 Canadian operetta Leo the Royal Cadet by O. F. Telgmann in an adaptation commissioned by Toronto Operetta Theatre. His most recent short comic opera, A Tall Order, was written for the Boston Opera Collaborative and premiered in 2016.
There are no productions for this artist in the Season Schedule of Performances which currently only dates back to 1991.
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Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
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