Jean Lesage received his musical studies at the Montréal 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. He has composed over forty works that have been performed in Canada, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Switzerland, in England, in Italy and in Austria. Many of his works have been commissionned by Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, SMCQ, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and CBC. He was awarded many prizes such as CAPAC (1987) and the Canada Council’s Robert Fleming Prize (1988).Very active on the Montréal 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 Québec’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.
