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Born to parents of Portuguese descent, John Estacio was born in Newmarket, Ontario and raised in the farming community of the Holland Marsh. While growing up, John took private lessons on piano and accordion and cut his teeth in performance playing the church organ every Sunday. He developed a bug for composing in his teenage years creating soundtracks for short films that he and his school buddies created. He continued to work on his performance chops by playing trumpet and taking roles in high school musicals (Aurora High School 1980-85). But he knew composition was what his heart desired.
He attended Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario where he majored in composition, 1985-1989. While at WLU he studied composition with Glenn Buhr and Peter Hatch and piano with Boyd MacDonald. Between 1989-1991 he earned his Masters of Music at University of British Columbia where he studied composition with Stephen Chatman.
He recently completed arrangements of Seven Songs by Jean Sibelius for performance by Ben Heppner and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. His currently resides in Edmonton, Alberta and is at work on his second opera, Frobisher, to be premiered in Calgary 2007.
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