He studied at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP) with Marius Constant (orchestration) and Pierre Boulez (conducting). From 1985 to 1990, he was a part of the musical research department of the IRCAM, where he explored digital synthesis and computer-assisted composition. The first work he created at the IRCAM, Diadèmes, brought him international attention, and is a regular feature in the touring repertoire of the Ensemble intercontemporain.

In 1992-1993 he traveled to Berlin on a fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), and in 1995-1996, he was a resident of the Villa Médicis in Rome. He has taught orchestration at the Conservatoire de Paris since 1996

Marc-André Dalbavie won the Composition Prize of the Salzburg Easter Festival and in 1998 was named Best Young Composer of the Year by USA Today. In 1998-99 he was a composer-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra, and in 2000, he was a composer-in-residence with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. For four seasons starting in 2001, he was a composer-in-residence with the Orchestre de Paris. He was the guest of honor of the Présences de Radio France Festival in 2005. In 2010, he was awarded the SACEM’s Grand Prix for symphonic music.

Dalbavie has successfully opened contemporary music in many different directions, and this has made him one of the most widely performed composers of his generation. He has received commissions from the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Orchestre de Paris, the BBC Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, and the Tokyo Philharmonic, and from musical institution such as Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, the London Proms, the Aspen Music Festival, the Marlboro Festival, and the the Cité de la musique in Paris.

His innovative approach has allowed him to lift several modernist taboos, including a return to consonance and sounding rhythmic pulsation, which he redeployed in concertos such as Concerto for piano (2005) and Concerto for flûte (2006), and in certain chamber music pieces, such as Trio n°1 (2008) and Quatuor avec piano (2011), as well as to melodic fluidity in vocal performances, through a rethinking of the relationship between text and music. After Sonnets de Louise Labé for countertenor and orchestra (2008), he wrote his first opera, Gesualdo, which premiered in Zurich in 2010, Charlotte Salomon (Salzburg Festival, 2014), Le Soulier de Satin (Opéra national de Paris, 2021) and Melancholy of Resistance (Staatsoper Berlin - Unter den Linden, 2024).