With an exceptional career spanning forty years, pianist Louise Bessette stands out for the excellence of her live performances. Numerous organizations and international competitions have seen to reward her talent, and her reviews are constantly laudatory. Many composers write especially for her.

Louise Bessette has performed with renowned conductors such as Leonardo García Alarcón (Les Violons du Roy), Charles Bruck (Orchestre symphonique de Québec), Edward Cumming (Ulster Orchestra, Belfast, Ireland), Agnieszka Duczmal (Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Poznań, Poland), Charles Dutoit and Kent Nagano (Orchestre symphonique de Montréal), Mauricio Kagel (Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France), Pascal Rophé (Orchestre national de Montpellier, France), Gerard Schwarz (New York Chamber Symphony), Michel Swierczewski (Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Denmark), Yuli Turovsky (I Musici de Montréal) and Pascal Verrot (Orchestre national de Lyon, France).

With her vast repertoire, she is regularly invited to perform at major music festivals such as Radio France’s Festival Présences (Paris), Festival Musica (Strasbourg), Festival Détours de Babel (Grenoble), Festival Tivoli (Copenhagen), the Numus Festival (Aarhus), the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Great Britain), the Festival international de Lanaudière (Quebec) and the Domaine Forget International Festival (Quebec). She performed at the World Music Days in Warsaw and Mexico. In 2007, she was invited as a piano professor and guest artist at the 4th International Piano Festival in Shanghai.

In 2019, Bessette received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award for Classical Music. The GGPAAs are Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts. In 2016, she was honoured by the University of Western Ontario in London, where she received an honorary doctorate in music to celebrate her accomplishments as an internationally recognized performer.

Louise Bessette is a pianist with an eclectic repertoire who is always keen to engage with different artistic communities. In 2009, she recorded works by Alkan and Grieg for a film soundtrack. Hidden Diary by French film director Julie Lopes-Curval, starring Catherine Deneuve and Marie-Josée Croze, was presented as a world premiere at the Festival des films du monde in Montréal (2009), and then in movie theatres all over the world.

Louise Bessette received her tenth Opus Prize from the Conseil québécois de la musique in 2021. In 2015, she was listed as one of Canada’s top 25 pianists by CBC Music. A first-prize winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (1981), the Concours international de musique contemporaine in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1986) and the International Gaudeamus Competition (Rotterdam, 1989), and a recipient of the Prix Québec-Flandre (1991), Member of the Order of Canada (2001), Officière de l’Ordre national du Québec (2005) and Canadian Music Centre Ambassador (2009), Louise Bessette has been a jury member at various international competitions and given master classes throughout Europe, Canada and Asia. She has been a professor of piano at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal since 1996. In 2024, she is named Knight of the Ordre de Montréal.