More than 50 years of fervent music love and passionate journalism will be celebrated at the 29th edition of the Opus Awards Gala on Sunday, February 8, 2026. I am referring to the career of Alain Brunet, a journalist who is unique in Quebec, Canada, and even internationally in that he has covered the entire spectrum of popular music as well as so-called serious music throughout his career. Try to find others who have done so with such aplomb and, above all, such sincerity!
Our friend Brunet, who will receive the Tribute Award at the Opus Gala, has shared his knowledge of listening and mediating musical art almost everywhere: from CIBL in his early days to La Presse, where he worked for 35 years, from 1984 to 2019 (and where most of us knew him), to Radio-Canada from 1984 to 2013, not to mention Télé-Québec and TVA. When I was young, I associated Alain with “popular” music, everything from rock to rap, metal, punk, soul, country, indie, and certain “edgy” genres such as contemporary jazz, prog rock, Indian classical music, electro, etc. But not classical music.
The thing is, at La Presse, someone else was exclusively in charge of that, with no desire to share except for interviews with classical artists, which Alain wrote more and more of starting in the 2000s, as well as in his blog (2007-2016), where he also produced album reviews and concert reports. It was only later that I discovered Alain Brunet’s love for the vast repertoire of millennial classical music from Europe, which finally made me realize the unparalleled magnitude of this man’s love of music.
Faced with a certain resignation on the part of traditional media when it comes to music curation, and their retreat into an almost exclusively mainstream and consensual zone, representing something like 2 or 3% of what exists in music, Alain founded Multimédias M 360 and its online platform PAN M 360 (us!!!) in 2019. Pan M 360 is a bilingual collaborative referencing vehicle whose purpose is the discovery, appreciation, analysis, and dissemination of creative music, across all genres and cultures, without any hierarchy of styles. A challenge that left many skeptical, but which is increasingly proving to be a success and even an indispensable offering.
Alain Brunet won’t shout it from the rooftops, nor will he stage his own media triumph to celebrate himself. That’s why we’re taking up the torch here to give him the recognition he fully deserves, because the result of his dedication has been and continues to be to inspire others, many others, to cross the boundaries between styles and thus open minds and hearts to the richness of Music, from Bach to Stockhausen, via John Coltrane and Sun Ra, John Zorn, King Crimson, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Hermeto Pascoal, Anouar Brahem, Aphex Twin, Alain Bashung, Stéphane Lafleur, and thousands upon thousands of others.
If you feel wonder at the infinite possibilities of emotions and listening pleasures that musical curiosity can produce, you are on the same wavelength as Alain, and all of us at PAN M 360.
On Sunday, February 8, 2026, at Bourgie Hall of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, we will thank the person who makes all this a little more possible every day, thanks to his hard work and unwavering dedication to this cause, which remains as vital and sincere as ever even after nearly half a century of loyal service.
INFO AND TICKETS FOR THE 29TH OPUS AWARDS GALA, IN FEBRUARY 2026
