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  Jean Lesage (Bio)


Jean Lesage is a Montréal composer born in 1958. He pursued his musical training with Gilles Tremblay for composition and analysis, Micheline Coulombe St-Marcoux and Yves Daoust for electronic music, Clermont Pépin for orchestration, and with Bernard and Mireille Lagacé for organ and harpsichord. His meeting with composer John Rea had a decisive impact on his development.


To be noted among the 40-odd works he has composed so far are: - Mare Fe-cunditatis (1986), for piano , CAPAC Prize 1987 - Trois apparitions au désert (1988), for mixed choir and large orchestra, Robert Flemming Prize from the Canadian Music Council 1988. - Le sentiment océanique (1989), for eight instruments, commissioned by the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM), presented at UNESCO's 1995 Rostrum of Composers, in Paris - Les sensations confuses (1993), for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, premiered in Strasbourg at the 1993 Musica Festival - Masques et Chimères (1996) for eleven instruments, commissioned by the ECM. - Les représentations surannées (1998) for orchestra, commissioned by l'Orchestre symphonique de Québec premiered in Québec at the Musique au présent Festival 1999. - Le livre des mélancolies (1999) for clarinet and string quartet commissioned by the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. - Portrait of a Sentimental Musician in a Distorting Mirror (2000) for violin and piano, commissioned by the CBC for Duo Concertante. - String Quartet (2001), commissioned by the Quatuor Bozzini.


Jean Lesage is very active on the Montréal music scene : he has been an advisory member of the Association pour la Création et la Recherche Électro-acoustique du Québec (ACREQ), a program coordinator for the Société des Concerts Alternatifs du Québec, and since 1990, a member of the artistic committee of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec. From 1987 to 1995, he was also a reporter for the program Musique actuelle, broadcast on Radio-Canada's FM radio. For the same network, in the summer of 1996, he produced and hosted Musique du Québec, a series of 12 programs on Québec's musical modernism. In 1996-1997, he was a guest editorial director for Circuit, a North American journal of Twentieth Century music.


Since 1999, Jean Lesage has been teaching composition and orchestration at the Schulich School of Music. Jean is currently the head of the Performance Department.
Jean Lesage