Pianist Carmen Picard is recognized, on the Montreal scene as well as across Canada, as a specialist in the chamber music repertoire. Thus, she plays regularly with many renowned instrumentalists and her great talent leads her to collaborate with various musical ensembles such as the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, the Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra, Drummondville Symphony Orchestra, Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, as well as several summer festivals in Quebec: Centre d'Arts d'Orford, Domaine Forget, Camp musical de Lanaudière, the Camp musical des Laurentides and the Métabetchouan music camp. These numerous collaborations have led her to perform in France, England (twice at Wigmore Hall in London…), United States, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria. His name is associated with various Canadian musical series. Well known on CBC and CBC FM radio, she has also recorded a vast repertoire of chamber music and film music on compact discs: NAXOS, Atma, Analekta, CBC, SME, UMMU.
After obtaining a master's degree in performance at McGill University (prof. Dorothy Morton), Carmen Picard studied with Marc Durand and Jacinthe Couture and, thanks to several scholarships (including the "A" scholarship from the Conseil des Arts du Québec), she perfected herself with renowned masters in the United States, Canada and Europe: Thomas Vasàry, Janina Fialkowska, André Laplante, Leon Fleisher, John Perry, Paul Fournier, Thomas Demenga, William Pleeth . She taught piano and chamber music as well as accompaniment from 1983 to 2016 at Cégep de Drummondville. She has been teaching since 2014 at the School of Music of the University of Sherbrooke: piano, chamber music, accompaniment. In addition, she has been collaborating for several years in choral singing and opera projects associated with the University of Sherbrooke.
Carmen Picard currently holds the presidency of the Quebec Music Competitions as well as that of the Sherbrooke section of the Music Competitions of Canada. Also vice-president of the national board of the CMC and founder of the "Cegep en Concert" competition, she devotes her passion for music to the development of new talents and the growth of the next generation of Quebec and Canadian musicians.
