Born in Quebec, Canada, Pierre-Antoine Tremblay is a horn player specializing in historical instruments, from the early stages of the horn during the Baroque era to the final Romantic flourishes of the early 20th century. He performs as first horn with prestigious period-instrument ensembles, including Le Concert des Nations (Spain), Europa Galante (Italy), Anima Eterna (Belgium), and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Canada). He is regularly invited to perform with ensembles such as the Freiburger Barockorchester (Germany), Collegium Vocale Gent (Belgium), Graindelavoix (Belgium), Orchestre des Champs-Élysées (France), Arion Baroque Orchestra (Canada), Vespres d’Arnadí (Spain), and Capriccio Stravagante (France). Over the past few years, he has performed in more than thirty countries across Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Philippe Herreweghe, Fabio Biondi, René Jacobs, Masaaki and Masato Suzuki, Sir Simon Rattle, Pablo Heras-Casado, Raphaël Pichon, Jordi Savall, and Ton Koopman.
As a soloist, Pierre-Antoine is equally at home in Baroque works with obbligato horn parts, such as Bach’s Mass in B minor or the First Brandenburg Concerto, and in the traditional horn concertos of composers such as Mozart and Richard Strauss. In 2014, he founded the Dialoghi Ensemble in Barcelona to explore Classical and Romantic repertoire on period instruments. The ensemble’s debut recording, featuring Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quintets for fortepiano and winds, was released by Harmonia Mundi in 2018.
Passionate about teaching early horn, he was appointed professor of early horn in 2023 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where he succeeded his mentor Claude Maury, and at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona. He has given masterclasses and lectures at conservatoires in Singapore, Quebec City, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Bordeaux, Versailles, Dijon, Parma, Porto, and Hanover, as well as at universities in Tokyo, Poitiers, Mexico City, Bucharest, Helsinki, Indiana, and Virginia. He has also given masterclasses at the Domaine Forget International Academy in Canada and has taught at McGill University in Montreal. He teaches regularly at the Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye (France).
He has been invited to perform at the International Horn Society (IHS) symposia in Montreal, Canada, in 2023 and in Virginia, USA, in 2025.
He began his musical education on the modern horn at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec with Julie-Anne Drolet and continued at McGill University in Montreal. He then studied the natural horn with Teunis van der Zwart at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where he earned a master’s degree in early music in 2012.
An enthusiast of history and instruments, Pierre-Antoine owns a collection of early horns, including three early 19th-century natural horns by Lucien-Joseph Raoux and Courtois Neveu Aîné, as well as a Vienna horn by Leopold Uhlmann. He collaborates with horn maker Richard Seraphinoff on the research and design of new historical horn models and is a long-time contributor to the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), making hundreds of works for horn accessible to everyone.
