Marie François is a Belgian concert pianist. Her repertoire characterizes her as a musician and human being: Bold, Brave and Lovable. She wants to transport the audience with piano music she loves and between pieces she talks about her interpretations and life as an artist. Marie is enthusiastic about life and - to the point of impatience - wants to get everyone excited about classical music. Therefore, all her projects can be described as storytelling: she wants to tell the story of the music and take the audience on that journey in the most personal way. She therefore combines her performances with lively and informative commentaries, in which she shares anecdotes about the music, the composers and the genre, making a unique connection with her audience.
Performed in Belgium in various venues and cultural centers, François has also given concerts in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Greece, Ukraine, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States. Highlights include performances at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp, the Concertgebouw in Bruges, and at the Athenaeum in Bucharest, the Martha Argerich Festival in Hamburg, the International Piano Festival in Miami, the Chamber Music Festival in Schiermonnikoog and the Aurora Festival in Sweden. She played as a soloist with Prima La Musica conducted by Dirk Brossé at Muziekcentrum De Bijloke. She played at Flagey's Piano Days and performed at the Martha Argerich Festival 2024 in Hamburg with violinist Geza Hosszu Legocky.
Her debut cd, Eclectic/Being me, was released in 2019 with the Dutch label, Challenge Records International. Two weeks later the cd got chosen among the 10 best classical music albums released that month on Apple Music worldwide. Together with artists such as Boris Giltburg and Renaud Capuçon. She released a new EP in 2021, Memories of Tomorrow. During the 2016 piano edition of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, she was a member of De Zes/Les Six, the young pianist's jury for Canvas and Klara. She often writes opinion pieces for multiple publications, is invited to join television panels and had her own tv program on Eclips TV. During the COVID health crisis, she organized The Corona Cure, a concert tour and online talk show where she discussed the future of classical music with a multitude of guests from the music scene. She also started her own podcast: Musings with Marie and is regularly asked to talk about classical music on the television and the radio. François started to play the piano at the age of four. She finished her Bachelor degree with Joop Celis at the Conservatory of Maastricht, her master’s degree in Belgium with Alan Weiss and her postgraduate with Polina Leschenko. She perfected her playing at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy with Elisso Virsaladze. François took part in masterclasses from Elisabeth Leonskaja, Jan Wijn, Pavel Gililov, Alexander Melnikov, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Anton Nell, Alexander Moutouzkine, Peter Donohoe… She took part in the Accademia Chigiana in Siena for four years where she had lessons with Lilya Zilberstein.

Who doesn't love Chopin's Nocturnes? is a brand-new concert program inspired by François' years of admiration for the Polish composer's repertoire. In 2023 she spent one month in Warsaw, studying all the nocturnes of Chopin. She reported her process in a daily podcast series for which she received the Belgian Podcast Award for Best Independent Story. The complete Nocturnes were recorded at the end of 2024. The release is expected in May 2025.

François performs with artists such as violinist Geza Hosszu Legocky, pianist Tony Yike Yang & Soprano Kelly Poukens, with whom she recently won the Vrienden van het Lied prize in The Netherlands.