Born in Montreal, Hélčne Mercier starts her piano studies at the age of six and quickly wins recognition by getting first honours at the Quebec and Canadian Music Competitions in piano solo and piano-violin. She is also an award winner of the Prague International Chamber Music Competition.
At the age of fifteen, she enters the Music Academy of Vienna at the invitation of Professor Dieter Weber. She later studies at the Juilliard School in New York with Sasha Gorodnitski, after having been awarded a scholarship subsequent to her admissions audition. She then goes to France where she studies under Pierre Sancan of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and with Germaine Mounier at the Ecole Normale de Musique. She also works with Maria Curcio, Stanislav Neuhaus, and in chamber music, with Gidon Kremer and Henryk Szeryng during summer sessions.
Hélčne Mercier now lives in Paris, and participates frequently in prestigious festivals in France, among which those held in Aix-en Provence, Menton, Colmar, Reims, Evian, La Chaise-Dieu, Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse and Radio-France in Montpellier. She is also heard at France-Musique, Radio Classique, France-Culture, Radio-Suisse-Romande, Radio-Canada and CBS in the USA. In Europe and in North America, she regularly performs as soloist and chamber music player : in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Salle Gaveau, in London at the South Bank Centre, in Italy at the Villa Medici, in Milan at the Piccolo Teatro, at the Music Academy of Sienna, in the Teatro Comunale of Ferrara, at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa, at the Lingotto auditorium in Torino...and elsewhere, in Geneva, Leipzig, Monte-Carlo, Athens, Sofia, Madrid, Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, and New York. She is also invited to play with several different European and North American orchestras: amongst others, at the Brescia-Bergamo International Festival, in Minneapolis and St. Paul with the Minnesota Orchestra. In Paris, she performs under the direction of Zubin Mehta with the Israël Philharmonic Orchestra and under the direction of Kurt Masur at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. She also plays with the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Spivakov and in Canada with the orchestras of Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal under the direction of Charles Dutoit. With the Orchestr de Paris, under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, she plays the Triple Concerto of Beethoven with Natalia Gutman and Salvatore Accardo. She performs with the violinist Vladimir Spivakov in Paris, Saint Petersburg, Montreal, at the Festival of Colmar and the Festival of Evian.
She performs with the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in Copenhagen and Paris.
In Japan, she makes her debut with the New Japan Philharmonic under the direction of Seiji Ozawa.
At the request of the conductor Kurt Masur, she joins the Gewandhaus Quartet of Leipzig for a series of concerts. She also performs with the Ludwig Quartet, the Leipzig Quartet, the musicians of the Moscow Virtuosi, with the violinists Renaud Capuçon,Ivry Gitlis and the cellist Gautier Capuçon. Her activities in chamber music flourish as well with the two pianos formation where she plays with different pianists such as Louis Lortie and Brigitte Engerer....
With Louis Lortie, two recordings with Chandos featuring works of Ravel, Schubert and Mozart have gathered the most outstanding reviews across the world. The prestigious London magazine Gramophone ranked them as among the Ť TOP SIX ť in their Quarterly Retrospect, and the Penguin Guide awarded them the highest distinctions: Ť The Rosette ť and three stars.
With the violinist Vladimir Spivakov, she has recorded a CD dedicated to Ernest Chausson, under the brand �Capriccio�. This recording has collected a considerable success both by critics and public and it has received the disk �Choc� of �Le Monde de la Musique�.
Hélčne Mercier is �Chevalier de l�Ordre des Arts et des Lettres�.