A student of Michel Longtin at l’Université de Montréal, Vincent Collard began his career by as composer in residence at the SMCQ, whose Ensemble premiered his work Shinkánsen in June 1997. He completed his training with courses and workshops at Array-music (Toronto, 1998), the ECM (Montréal, 1999) and GRAME (Lyon, 2001).
At the end of 1999, the premiere of his Concerto «Lucky Luke» by trombonist Alain Trudel and the Ensemble de la SMCQ was unanimously acclaimed by Montréal critics. In 2000, Collard joined the collective performing Symphonie du millénaire, a monumental 99-minute work for 333 musicians, premiered before a jubilant audience of 55,555. Collard has more than thirty works in his catalogue, more than half of them commissioned.
Performed by many renowned ensembles and soloists, his music poses a playful and stimulating challenge for them. A recipient of several grants from the CAC and CALQ, the composer also received commissions from Radio-Canada (at a time when the institution was fulfilling its mandate to support creation) which, through the International Rostrum of Composers, also promotes the dissemination of his music on several public radio stations in Europe (France, Switzerland, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania) and Asia (Japan, South Korea).
A versatile creator, Vincent Collard is also a poet, painter and singer. Since 2005, these disciplines have been growing in importance, temporarily overshadowing his work as a composer. Ten years later, he has taken up the thread of his musical approach by undertaking the composition of a third string quartet, premiered in 2018 by the Quator Molinari String Quartet. “Zone V” (2020) was commissioned by the Ensemble Paramirabo.