Jean-Michel Blais

Jean-Michel Blais is a Montreal-based pianist, composer and performer signed to Arts & Crafts and Mercury KX (Decca). In the first decade since the release of 2016’s landmark debut album Il, the classically trained Blais has defined his own music by a reverent intimacy he shares with his instrument, the piano. Appearing on TIME’s Top 10 Best Albums that year, the magazine said of his improvisationally-inspired debut release: “his music breathes, invites one to take a moment, and acknowledges that there is still much beauty in the world.”

Through this connection with the piano, the multiple Polaris Music Prize shortlisted and two-time Juno nominated artist’s music has reached masses, performing one of the largest neoclassical concerts in history to nearly 40,000 at Montreal Jazz fest, collaborating with the Orchestre de l’Agora and the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and counting over 397 million streams across a catalogue of three studio albums – including the ambient & new age-inspired Dans ma main (2018), which draws influence from music that soothed his Tourette’s syndrome as a child, and the Félix award-winning aubades (2022), Blais’s first foray into composition for chamber orchestra – and including désert (2025), a collaboration with American harpist Lara Somogyi. His diverse resume of experimental releases include the Cannes award-winning Matthias & Maxime (2019) film soundtrack, the serenades (2023) EP of twilight music, and Cascades (2017), a collaboration with producer CFCF – each an exploration of Blais’ “thrilling synchronization of piano and electronics” (Pitchfork) that is a thread through his output.

On mirador – his fourth album, releasing September 2026 – Blais is poised to deliver an epic, delving into a beneath-the-surface odyssey that spans choirs, strings, and the music of the Andes – running from Spanish caves to Estonian forests and back again to his hometown of tiny Nicolet, Québec. mirador finds the enigmatic Blais opening the listeners’ gaze onto his wide, wondrous, and personal world – an aspirational journey in which he exchanges contemporary minimalism for a light, generous maximalism.

Throughout his discography, Blais uses instrumentation and composition as tools of personal expression, subtly revealing layers of his own character – as a queer artist, a perpetual traveller, student, and caregiver – often told through the perspective of his upbringing. Now four albums into his career, Jean-Michel Blais is no longer just charting the map of his grown-up heart: on mirador, he offers a new vantage on childhood—a vivid and vicarious chance to listen anew, gazing ahead into the imaginary.