Wise Music Group has signed a long-term publishing agreement with Canadian composer Jean-Michel Blais. Blais joins the roster at Paris-based Wise Music France, alongside writers including Betsy Jolas, Vasco Mendonça and Josephine Stephenson, and a back catalogue comprising Nadia Boulanger, Henri Dutilleux, Claude Nougaro, Olivier Messiaen, Jean-Louis Murat, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Salvador, Dmitri Shostakovitch, plus many other greats.
Blais’ fourth album mirador, released this September on the MERCURY KX label, is an odyssey that spans choirs, strings and the music of the Andes, running from Spanish caves to Estonian forests and back again to the hideaway in tiny Nicolet, Québec, where Blais first imagined the adventures that might await him. For the visual world of mirador, Blais reunites with filmmaker Adrian Villagomez, his collaborator on the award-winning video for passepied. Together, they created the album artwork, visualisers and a longform narrative film that brings several tracks into one immersive performance space.
Blais has also built on his signature solo piano sound with orchestral arrangements from his Félix award-winning 2022 album aubades – these are now available for performance through this new deal.
This season, Blais tours Europe, the USA and Canada
26-27 TOUR DATES
“I am thrilled to be starting this new chapter with Wise Music,” says Jean-Michel Blais. “It was important to me to entrust my copyrights to a renowned company whose work I respect, and I am proud to be part of it today. Joining a family-owned business of this stature— representing both the great composers of the past and the creators of today—marks a significant milestone in my artistic journey.”
Thomas Jamois, Managing Director, Wise Music France says: “We are delighted to welcome Jean-Michel to the prestigious Wise Music roster. His rare emotional and powerful melodies are proof of a unique sensitivity with a high artistic standard. We are fully committed to nurturing his work across his genre-blending approach.”
“His music breathes, invites one to take a moment,
and acknowledges that there is still much beauty in the world.”
– TIME Magazine on Jean-Michel Blais
Jean-Michel Blais on Spotify | Jean-Michel Blais at wisemusicclassical.com
About Jean-Michel Blais
Jean-Michel Blais is a Montreal-based pianist, composer and performer signed to the record labels 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.”
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. In 2023, Blais performed one of the largest neoclassical concerts in history, at the Montreal Jazz festival in front of 40,000 people. In 2024, he collaborated with the Symphonic Orchestra of Québec, conducted by Dina Gilbert, and the Orchestre de l’Agora, to perform a symphonic arrangement of his album aubades. jeanmichelblais.com