Pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin has a wide-ranging repertoire, from Bach to Dutilleux, that includes solo music, concertos, and chamber music. He has focused especially on Chopin and took a major prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition.

Richard-Hamelin was born in Joliette, Quebec, Canada, northeast of Montreal, on July 17, 1989. He attended McGill University in Montreal, earning a bachelor's degree in 2011, and went on to the Yale School of Music for a master's degree, which he completed in 2013. His teachers along the way include Paul Surdulescu, Sara Laimon, and Jean Saulnier. Several prizes just after finishing his schooling jump-started Richard-Hamelin's career. He won second prize at the Montreal International Musical Competition and third prize at the Seoul International Music Competition in South Korea in 2014. The following year, he entered the International Chopin Piano Competition, held just once every five years in Warsaw. He took second prize overall and won the Krystian Zimerman Award for Best Performance of a Sonata. After these honors, Richard-Hamelin began to find major international bookings. He has appeared with many major orchestras in both French and English Canada, as well as with the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Korean Symphony, and the Singapore Symphony, among some 50 other groups. Richard-Hamelin has been visible on the festival scene, performing at La Roque d’Anthéron in France, the Prague Spring Festival, and the Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw.

As of the early 2020s, Richard-Hamelin has made nine recordings, including one reproducing his Chopin competition performances issued by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. The rest have appeared on the Analekta label and include a cycle of Beethoven's sonatas for violin and piano with Andrew Wan, first violinist of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, in addition to solo albums devoted to Chopin and others. ~ James Manheim, Rovi