Maxime Pidoux, born in Paris in 1994, began his musical career at the age of 5 on the piano. Two years later he took his first percussion lessons at the Conservatoire Hector Berlioz with Nicolas Martynciow.

 

This was followed by marimba training with Eric Sammut, timpani with Jean-Claude Gengembre, jazz vibraphone with David Patrois and drumset with François Merville.

 

His great urge to discover new ways of playing drums led Maxime to Munich in 2013, where he studied with Prof. Raymond Curfs at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

 

He expanded his musical training with the French Youth Orchestra, Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Sanderling, Christoph Eschenbach, Krzysztof Urbanski, Manfred Honeck and Daniel Harding.

 

From September 2016 until December 2017, he was a member of the Orchestra Academy of the Bavarian State Orchestra.

 

This was followed by additional professional orchestral experience as a solo timpanist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian State Orchestra, Orchestra of La Scala Milan, Orchestre de Paris, Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, among others, Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt and Munich Symphony Orchestra with Kirill Petrenko, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, Andris Nelsons, Myung-Whun Chung, Klaus Mäkelä, Gianandrea Noseda, Paavo Järvi, Ivan Fischer, François-Xavier Roth, Pablo Heras-Casado, Ivor Bolton, Thomas Hengelbrock and Ingo Metzmacher.

 

Between January 2018 and December 2021, Maxime was engaged as 1st percussionist in the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Kirill Petrenko.

 

Since January 2022, he has been principal timpanist of La Scala in Milan under the baton of Riccardo Chailly.

 

Since October 2022 Maxime Pidoux is Senior Lecturer for timpani at the University Mozarteum Salzburg.