John Greer
interviewed by Allan Pulker

As the conductor of Toronto Operetta Theatre's production of Leo, the Royal Cadet (May 2-6) and the composer of the opera, The Snow Queen, which will be performed by the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus on May 12 & 13, John Greer is very much in our midst in May --more so than usual, these days.

While he was very active as a musician in Toronto from 1979 to 1996, he now lives in Rochester, where he is Director of the Eastman School of Music Opera Theatre. And in July and August he is the musical director of two of the four productions mounted by the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina.

Only in his mid-forties, John Greer is building  a musical career of considerable consequence. "How," I asked him over lunch in mid-April before a Leo rehearsal, "did he get to where he is now?"

A native of Winnipeg, he studied piano there as a child and played the cello at school. He began writing music at a very young age and as a teenager was writing arrangements for his school orchestra. At the University of Manitoba he continued his piano studies and studied composition with Boyd McDonald.  He went on to do graduate work at the University of Southern California, specializing in accompanying under the direction of Gwendolyn Koldofsky and Brooks Smith. In the summer of 1979 he studied with renowned accompanist, Dalton Baldwin, who suggested that if he wished to return to Canada he should go to Toronto.

Coming here in the fall of 1979, he found work as a vocal coach at the Opera School at the University of Toronto. In this job, which he modestly describes as his "professional apprenticeship" he worked with many singers, including Russell Braun, Tracy Dahl, Adrianne Pieczonka,  Kimberly Barber, John Fanning and Catherine Robbin.

Greer describes himself as "obsessed" with vocal music and with theatre. It was, therefore, a natural move for him, in addition to his work as a piano accompanist, to write arrangements of Canadian folk songs for the singers he was working with and also to begin directing productions for the G and S Society.

What really launched him as a composer was Catherine Robbins' request in 1988 to write a song cycle for her. Once started he couldn't stop, going on to write nine more song cycles. In 1990 he was commissioned by the CCOC to compose The Snow Queen to a libretto by Jeremy James Taylor, director of the National Youth Music Theatre in England. Premiered in 1993, it led to a second commission, The Star Child, premiered in May 2000.

With such an impressive track record as a composer of operas, John Greer was the ideal musician to take on the musical direction of Leo, the Royal Cadet. The original score, by Oscar Telgmann, a German-born Canadian, had problems: long,  structurally weak, the solo tessitura frequently unnecessarily limited or not well-suited to singers' actual ranges, the choral writing simplistic, and the harmonizations not always showing the composer's considerable melodic gift to advantage.

Working closely with Virginia Reh, who edited the libretto, he rewrote the score, omitting weaker songs to shorten it, and composing a new finale to Act 1 to help with the structural weakness. He also re-orchestrated it for 13 instruments, emulating the chamber opera scores of his 20th century composer idol, Benjamin Britten. "Britten has taught me more about craftsmanship and personal forays into finding my own voice" than any other composer.

TOT artistic director Guillermo Silva-Marin lauds Greer's "incredible enthusiasm for the music of this show - he has fallen in love with Leo - so all of us have too. He has been an  inspiration!"

The resulting show, with its engaging story and Telgmann's delightful melodies, promises to be a hit, both in Toronto and in Kingston where it will be presented the following weekend.  In its revised, more artistically satisfying form with the new, compact, and therefore affordable, orchestration, it should be seeing many more productions across Canada.

Composer, arranger, music director/conductor/teacher and collaborative pianist, John Greer epitomizes the complete working musician. We are fortunate to have him back with us, even if only for a while.

Footnote:
On May 6 Concertsingers will perform John Greer's choral arrangement of the Newfoundland folk song, "All Around the Circle:" see the listings for details.