In this paper, the speed regulation problem of permanent synchronous motor (PMSM) systems under the vector control framework is studied. A model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) based on the Lyapunov stability theory is first designed. Since the standard MRAC method provides poor disturbance rejection performance in the case of strong disturbances, a composite control method which combines the MRAC method and the disturbance estimation method, called the MRAC+ESO method, is proposed. An extended state observer (ESO) is introduced to estimate the lumped disturbances. The obtained estimated value acts as a feedforward compensation term to the MRAC controller. A stability analysis of the composite control method is given. Simulation and experimental results are presented and compared to show the effectiveness of the proposed control method.