When he was fifteen the family moved to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, where Ager dropped out of school a year later and spent much time in a studio on their property studying music and literature on his own.

During this time he was Composer-in-Residence for various ensembles in Albuquerque, Sulmona (Italy), and Ottawa and had his music performed in Berlin, Venice, Monte Carlo, Paris, and New York City, as well as locally.

At present he lives in Rockcliffe, Ottawa, and is writing a full-scale grand opera based on a prominent American crime family.

In 2014, Ager's comic opera "Casanova" was premiered by Ottawa's "Seventeen Voyces", directed by Kevin Reeves, and was produced again in Toronto by COSI the same year.

Described as a "morbid historical drama", the opera shows the decline and suicide of Adolf Hitler amidst the crumbling surroundings of his underground bunker, in the company of Eva Braun and the remaining staff as Berlin fell to the Soviet armed forces.

Ager was advised against writing it - but he has succeeded in creating a stage work that unsympathetically shows the human end of an evil historical figure.

In November 2018, Ager conducted the Cantata Signers of Ottawa and Orchestra for the premiere of his work "The Eleventh Hour" at a gala concert commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the end of WWI at the Canadian War Museum.

The Centre for Opera Studies and Appreciation, based in Toronto, Darryl Edwards, Artistic Director, is commissioning Ager to write "The Waves", a ghost story using original music and referencing Maritime Folksong.