Élisabeth Pion

A curious explorer of piano repertoire with a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, French-Canadian pianist Élisabeth Pion is the Gold Laureate and Audience Choice Award winner of the 2025 Honens International Piano Competition, where she demonstrated passion, insight, and intellectual acuity, fulfilling Honens’ ideal of the Complete Artist.

A Radio-Canada 2024-25 Breakthrough Artist, Élisabeth appears on international stages as a recitalist, chamber musician, and guest artist, earning acclaim for her technical precision and deep engagement with her repertoire. She has performed at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and Sala Cecília Meireles, and performs regularly with the Orchestre Métropolitain, Edmonton Symphony, the Toledo Symphony, the Brazilian Symphony, and Les Violons du Roy, among other distinguished ensembles. She has collaborated with conductors such as Gerard Schwarz, Elias Grandy, Nathalie Marin, Kensho Watanabe, and Nicolas Ellis.

Élisabeth performs 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 that were Prix Opus finalists: Femmes de Légende, and Amadeus et l’Impératrice, with Arion Orchestre Baroque and Mathieu Lussier. She 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, and a solo album for the Steinway & Sons label.

A laureate of numerous international competitions, Élisabeth was a 2025 finalist at the Bösendorfer and Yamaha USASU competitions and prizewinner at the Blanca Uribe, Vigo, and Rio Piano Festival competitions, among others. She was the 2022 recipient of the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada Prix Choquette-Symcox, and the recipient of a Jane Ades Ingenuity Scholarship.

Born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Élisabeth studied in Montréal and London, where she now lives. 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 received the Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize. Élisabeth studied conducting from the keyboard with Ricardo Castro at the Scuola di musica di Fiesole, and worked with Enrico Pace at the Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo, as well as with Gabriela Montero at OAcademy.

Élisabeth is also involved with the International Liberty Association, which promotes human rights in Iran and the Middle East, particularly for women and children.