After belately starting music in his last years of high school, Simon Bertrand started a multi-instrumental training at the Conservatory of Montreal on both the clarinette and saxophone, which led him over the years into Jazz and several chamber music ensembles . However, composition gradually became his main point of interest, in which he received a basic training from André Prévost at the University of Montréal, where he was also introduced to the treasures of traditional ethnical music by Jose Evangelista. From 1990 to 1998 he settled in Paris,where he completed several degrees in saxophone and chamber music, and studied writing an theoretical manners with Prix de Rome winner Marcel Bitsh and musical analysis and composition with Claude Ballif, under the aegis of whom he received in 1994 a unanimous 1st prize for composition, first nominee.

Since then he has been very active as a composer, teacher and lecturer and his music has been performed in several countries such has France, Denmark, Holland, Japan, USA and Canada by soloists and chamber music ensembles such as the Trio Maurice Duruflé, The New Danish Saxophone Quartet, the Trio Contrastes, The NEM, and Pro Musica Nipponia, among others. His music has been broadcast by Radio-France, Radio-Canada and NHK(Japan). He has received numerous grants form the Council of Arts and Letters of Quebec Arts and, in 2000, was a grantee of the Japanese government's Cultural Affair Invitation program for artists from abroad. He was then invited for lectures at the Toho Gakuen university of music of Tokyo and the Hiroshima Elizabeth University.

From 2001 to 2003, he was composer in residence at la Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montréal. Since his return to Canada from Japan in January 2001, he has been at the origin of many events and initiatives in the contemporary music area.