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An alumnus of the Université de Montréal, McGill University, the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, where he studied early music performance with Catherine Motuz and Charles Toet, Maximilien Brisson has quickly established himself as a leading specialist of historical trombones both in Europe and North America. He has performed with the Freiburger Barockorchester, Akamus, Concerto Palatino, il Gardellino, Collegium Vocale Gent, Les Cornets Noirs, I Gemelli, Les Traversées Baroques, l’Harmonie des Saisons and the Toronto Consort, among others. He is a member of I Fedeli and ¡Sacabuche! and a founding member of canticum trombonorum and Le Consort laurentien, with which he was finalist at the prestigious YorkComp in 2019. He appears on disc with ¡Sacabuche! (Hidden treasures, ATMA), ensemble cantissimo (Choralis Constantinus 1508, Carus), the European Hanseatic Ensemble (Musik aus Alten Hansestädten, Vol. 1, cpo) and Philippe Brach (Le silence des troupeaux, Spectra Musique), and recently recorded his first solo album with Christophe Gauthier and Luc Beauséjour.
Maximilien is lecturer for Baroque Trombone at the University of the Arts Bremen. He also teaches at the MentiParti historical improvisation summer workshop in Basel, and has taught at masterclasses and workshops at the University of Toronto, the San Francisco Early Music Society and the Madison Early Music Festival. Also active as a scholar and editor, his current interests include the works of Lodovico Viadana, Andreas Oswald and František Ignác Tůma as well as organological research on historical trombones.
“At times, their sound was supernaturally soft, quiet and surprisingly gentle, while they showed the louder and more virtuosic side of the trombone in more rhetorically appropriate parts such as Bassano’s arrangement of Palestrina’s motet Pulchra es with numerous diminutions in the superb performance of trombonist Maximilien Brisson.”
— Večernji list, Zagreb, 7 October 2023
An accomplished leader, Maximilien made his conducting debut in 2011. In 2012, he was the music director of a 28-hour-long musical marathon and conducted a live-broadcast performance of Mozart’s Requiem. He was Artistic Director of the Concerts de la Métropole from 2013 to 2016. He conducted numerous premieres, including that of orchestral works by a collective of Canadian and American composers in Los Angeles, and has led a critically-acclaimed performance of Mahler’s Sixth symphony. He is now Artistic Director of the Viadana Collective, a new ensemble formed of major figures and rising stars of the Canadian and international early music scenes, which embarked on its debut tour and CD recording in May 2023.
“What we heard there compared to the best Mahler there is, both live and on disc. […] This reviewer was shaken by what he heard. He even had tears in his eyes. Because this Mahler’s Sixth, sometimes called the Tragic, is perhaps, indeed, the most moving of all and it was rendered in its full and terrifying dimension by this astonishing young conductor and all these musicians of his generation that he spurred at every moment.”
— Claude Gingras, La Presse, Montreal, 5 May 2013
Maximilien Brisson 