Jump to the navigation
Jean Lesage |
 Biography |
Jean Lesage was born in Montreal in 1958. He received his musical studies at the Montreal Conservatory of Music with Gilles Tremblay in analyses and composition, with Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux and Yves Daoust in electroacoustic, with Clermont Pépin in orchestration and with Bernard and Mireille Lagacé in organ and harpsichord. Meeting John Rea was crucial in his musical training.
To this day, he has composed over forty works which includes: Mare Fecunditatis (1986) for piano, CAPAC Prize 1987; Trois apparitions au desert (1988) for mixed choir and large orchestra, Canada Council’s Robert Flemming Prize in 1988; Le sentiment océanique (1989) for eight instruments, commissioned by the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM), presented at the UNESCO International Tribune of Composers in Paris in 1995; Les sensations confuses (1993) for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) premiered at the Musica 93 Festival in Strasburg; Masques et chimères (1996) for eleven instruments, commissioned by the ECM; Fantasia stravagante (1997) for piano, commissioned by Marc Couroux; Les representations surannées (1998) for orchestra, commissioned by the Quebec Symphony Orchestra; Le livre des melancholies (1999) for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by the SMCQ; Portrait of a Sentimental Musician in a Distorting Mirror (2000) for violin and piano, commissioned by the CBC for the Duo Concertante. His works have been performed in Canada, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Switzerland, in England, in Italy and in Austria.
Very active on the Montreal music scene, Jean Lesage was a board member of the Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustique du Québec (ACREQ), he was head of programming for the Société des concerts alternatifs du Québec (SCAQ), he is a member of the artistic committee for the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) since 1990. He was also the host of the Société Radio-Canada (SRC) radio program Musique actuelle from 1987-1995. During the summer of 1996, he produced and hosted, for SRC, a series of 12 radio shows entitled Musique du Québec which presented Quebec’s musical modernism. In 1996-97, he was chief editor of the magazine Circuit, the north American magazine on 20th century music. In 1998 he worked with Denys Bouliane in compiling the book Présences de la musique québécoise.
Jean Lesage has been teaching composition at McGill University in Montreal since 1999. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.
