For over three decades, the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has appeared worldwide, his performances and award-winning recordings attesting to his remarkable musical range. A student of Yvonne Hubert (a pupil of the legendary Alfred Cortot) in Montreal, the Beethoven specialist Dieter Weber in Vienna, and the Schnabel disciple Leon Fleisher, he won First Prize in the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in 1984 and the same year was a prize winner at the Leeds International Piano Competition. From then on, he embarked on an international career which keeps him in demand on five continents.
He has established long-term partnerships with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Dresdner Philharmonie in Europe, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony and St Louis Symphony Orchestra in the US, and the Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary Symphony Orchestras in Canada. Further afield, he has collaborated with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, where he has also served as artist-in-residence, as well as the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, and Adelaide and Sydney Symphony Orchestras.