Olivier Gardon was seven years old when he came to the attention of the Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus. He went on to study at the Conservatoire de Nice and at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique (CNSM) in Paris with Pierre Sacan and Jean Hubeau, and he perfected his skills under the guidance of Jean Fassina, Géza Anda, Lili Kraus, and György Sebök.

Olivier Gardon has garnered numerous awards in prestigious international competitions, including the Marguerite Long competition (1973), the Queen Elisabeth Competition (1975), the Viotti International Music Competition and the Casella Piano Competition in Naples. Since then, his career as a soloist and chamber musician has taken him to all the greatest musical venues of the world (the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Salle Pleyel, and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican Center in London, the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg, the Bunka Keikan and the Kioi Hall in Tokyo, the Dvorak Hall in Prague, the Théâtre Solis in Montevideo...)

He has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchester, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille, under the baton of conductors such as Karl Münchinger, Ferdinand Leitner, Pierre Dervaux, Uri Segal, Theodor Guschlbauer, Davis Shallon, Serge Baudo, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Jacques Mercier, Philippe Bender, Jean Pierre Wallez,…

Olivier Gardon's discography includes works by Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Mussorgsky, complete piano works by Vierne and complete chamber music by Alkan (Prix Spécial de la Nouvelle Académie du disque français). In 2011, Bärenreiter publishes the new urtext edition of Vierne's piano Préludes and Nocturnes revised by Olivier Gardon.

He teaches piano at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional (CRR) de Paris and is regularly invited to teach master classes in France, Austria, Germany, Japan, US. He has served as a judge at numerous international competitions such as Marguerite Long-Thibaud (France), Cincinnati World Piano Competition (US), Tbilissi International Piano Competition (Georgia), etc.