Le Balcon

French saxophonist Valentine Michaud, born in 1993, is the recipient of numerous awards, and in 2020 won the prestigious Credit Suisse Young Artist Award. The first saxophonist to perform as a soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, she made her debut under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Lucerne Festival in 2022. Valentine has been a guest of renowned orchestras such as the MDR Sinfonieorchester, the United States Navy Band, the Moscow Philharmonic, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. This 2024/25 season, Valentine is soloist in residence with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, with 25 concerts conducted by Jonathan Nott, Zofia Kiniorska, and Guiseppe Mengoli. Convinced of the richness of collaborations with other artistic forms and seeking to develop new concert formats, Valentine is co-founder of the transdisciplinary collective SIBJA, within which she is the artistic director with her brother Emmanuel Michaud. An enthusiastic chamber musician, she has performed around the world since 2015 with pianist Akvilė Šileikaitė (Akmi duo) with whom the album "Beyond the Wall" was released for Avie Records in 2023, and since 2022 with her brother Gabriel Michaud on percussion, with whom they produced the album "Oiseaux de Paradis" for Mirare Productions in 2024. Committed to creation, Valentine strives to expand the repertoire by collaborating with numerous composers. In 2024, she notably premiered Jesper Nordin's concerto with Daniel Harding and Swedish Radio, accompanied by her brother Emmanuel Michaud, visual soloist, as well as the Swiss premiere of Anna Clyne's Glasslands with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Zofia Kiniorska. Based in Switzerland since 2010, she graduated from the Lausanne University of Music, the Sorbonne University Paris IV, and the Zurich University of the Arts, and has taught at the Geneva Conservatoire Populaire de Musique since 2017. Since September 2024, she has been a visiting professor at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

In 2023, Valentine Michaud performed The Threepenny Opera with Le Balcon, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and at the Comédie-Française.