Born in 1993, Valentine Michaud is a French saxophonist who has won numerous prizes, especially the Credit SuisseJeunes Solistes Award (2017) and, in 2020, the prestigious Credit Suisse Young Artist Award. The first saxophone soloist to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, she made her debut under conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Lucerne Festival in 2022. As a guest artist, Valentine plays with renowned orchestras like the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, MDR Sinfonieorchester, United States Navy Band, Moscow Philharmonic, or the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
Convinced that there is an opportunity for fruitful collaboration with other artistic forms, and with a view to developing unprecedented concert formats, Valentine is also co-founder of the SIBJA, an artist collective, whose artistic directors are her brother Emmanuel Michaud and herself — also collaborating as a performer and a costume designer.
An enthusiastic chamber musician, she has been performing all over the world since 2015 with the pianist Akvilé Sileikaité, (Akmi duo) and since 2022 with her brother Gabriel Michaud on percussion, also renewing the instrument’s repertoire through various collaborations with many composers.
Valentine, who settled in Switzerland in 2010, has graduated from the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne, from Paris-IV Sorbonne University, and the Haute Ecole d’Art in Zurich.
