Biography
A curious explorer of piano repertoire with a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, 29-year-old French-Canadian pianist Élisabeth Pion is the Gold Laureate and Audience Choice Award winner of the 2025 Honens International Piano Competition. She appears on international stages as a recitalist, chamber musician, and guest artist, earning acclaim for her technical precision, expressive range, and deep engagement with her repertoire.
Élisabeth has performed at prestigious venues such Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Maison Symphonique, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and Sala Cecília Meireles. She is a regular guest artist with distinguished ensembles including the Orchestre Métropolitain, Edmonton Symphony, the Toledo Symphony, the Brazilian Symphony, and Les Violons du Roy, and has collaborated with conductors such as Gerard Schwarz, Elias Grandy, Nathalie Marin, Kensho Watanabe, and Nicolas Ellis, to name a few. She was a Radio-Canada 2024-25 Breakthrough Artist.
At Honens, one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world, Élisabeth demonstrated passion, insight, and emotional and intellectual acuity, fulfilling the competition’s ideal of the Complete Artist. International Piano wrote that her first-round finals performance of Franck’s F-minor Piano Quintet with the Isidore String Quartet “favored poetic flow over dramatic volatility.” To close the competition, Élisabeth performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, praised by BBC Music Magazine as “introspective and, at times, brilliantly bravura” and by International Piano as
“brilliantly lit, rhythmically alive, and fully attuned to Prokofiev’s multi-pronged personality.”
Élisabeth enjoys performing a broad range of concerto repertoire, adding her own perspective to known masterworks and bringing rarely performed works to new audiences. She has released two albums on the ATMA Classique label, both of which were finalists for the Prix Opus: the solo album Femmes de Légende, featuring works by Adès, Bonis, Lili Boulanger, Debussy, and Dutilleux; and Amadeus et l’Impératrice, with Arion Orchestre Baroque and Mathieu Lussier. Élisabeth continues to collaborate with Arion and Lussier for a forthcoming release of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos. Other upcoming recordings include Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières and conductor Alain Trudel (to be released in June 2026), and a solo album for the Steinway & Sons label (recording in 2026).
A native of Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Élisabeth began playing the piano at age five in a household filled with music. She also developed a passion for science, literature, and philosophy, and decided to pursue a career in music at 19, guided by her intuitive physical relationship to the piano. After studying in Montréal, she moved to London, where she now lives, for advanced training. She is an alumna of the Imogen Cooper Music Trust and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she worked with Professor Ronan O’Hora and graduated with the Junior Fellowship, Artist Diploma, and Artist Masters, with highest honours; she was also the winner of the Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize. She also took on conducting from the keyboard with Ricardo Castro at the Scuola di musica di Fiesole, and most recently worked with Enrico Pace at the Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo, as well as with Gabriela Montero at OAcademy. Her first mentors were Francine Lacroix, Suzanne Goyette and André Laplante.
Élisabeth enjoys meeting with fellow inventive minds: she has worked with composer Thomas Adès at IMS Prussia Cove, with Marc-André Hamelin at the Art of Piano program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and, most recently, with Antoine Veillerette at the Festival Ravel. At the Guildhall School, she trained in classical improvisation and cadenza writing with David Dolan. An innovative artist, Élisabeth is also the co-founder and co-artistic director, with cellist Agnès Langlois, of the Festival Unisson in Canada, an immersive festival drawing inspiration from Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present.
In 2025, in addition to Honens, Élisabeth was a finalist at the Bösendorfer and Yamaha USASU International Piano Competition. She won second prize at the 2024 Blanca Uribe International Piano Competition; a Pierre-Mantha Award from the Fondation Père-Lindsay; the Bita-Cattelan Philanthropic Engagement Award at the Concours musical international de Montréal 2024; the Rosalía de Castro Award at the 2024 Vigo International Piano Competition; and third prize at the 2023 Rio Piano Festival. She was the 2022 recipient of the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada Prix Choquette-Symcox, and the recipient of a Jane Ades Ingenuity Scholarship.
Tai chi has been at the heart of Élisabeth’s practice for years; the discipline helps her feel grounded and strengthens the inner compass that guides both her daily life and her preparation for live performance. She regularly gives tai chi workshops to orchestra and audience members around her performances. She is also involved with the International Liberty Association, which aims at promoting the respect of human rights in Iran and the Middle East, particularly those of women and children.
Élisabeth believes the piano speaks to people from all walks of life. “Performance,” she says, “is a way of sharing a deep connection with others in real time, enveloped in a heightened sense of consciousness, of transcendence through art.”
v. February 2026
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Collaborations
Élisabeth loves fostering meaningful connections with her colleagues on stage. Her musical partners include Dame Imogen Cooper, Juliana Koch (Principal Oboe of the London Symphony Orchestra), Julie Price (Principal Bassoon of the BBC Symphony), tenor Mark Padmore, mezzo-soprano Alexandra Achillea, the Vertavo Quartet, and the vocal ensemble Les Rugissants. She has been invited to perform as part of prestigious chamber music festivals such as IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, Leeds International Concert Season, and Midsummer Music.
She was the pianist of the De Beauvoir Trio from 2020 to 2023. During her time as part of the ensemble, the trio shone at the 2022 Vainiunas International Chamber Competition and the 2021 Virtuoso & Bel Canto Competition. They also were Chamber Ensemble in Residence of the Britten Pears Young Artist Program, and were showcased by the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) in Oslo.
She also loves to work closely with conductors, elaborating joint interpretations through discussion and experimentation - she notably has a long-standing relationship with Arion Orchestre Baroque and Mathieu Lussier.
Élisabeth has also had considerable experience of interdisciplinary collaboration with artists from different backgrounds, such as photographers the Sanchez Brothers for “The Lesson”, visual artist Patrick Bernatchez during ”Goldberg Experienced” at the MAC Montréal, and Le Théâtre Indépendant, as musical director of the “Quartett Solo” production (Heiner Müller).
Festival Unisson
Created in 2020 by co-artistic directors cellist Agnès Langlois and pianist Élisabeth Pion, The Festival Unisson, inspired by Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present & the 1:1 Concerts in Germany, centres on creating a 15-minutes immersive experience between a single listener and a mystery-musician, exploring the power of intertwined silence, sounds, and gaze.
The Canada-based Festival has since its inauguration crafted a wide range of events, collaborating with renowned musicians and composers from the québécois & Canadian scene as well as various organisations, such as Zayat Aromat, creating a special scent to accompany each immersion, as well as Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, affiliated with Bourgie Hall.
