Émile Parisien was born on October 12, 1982, in Cahors, in the Lot département of southwest France, and is one of the leading French soprano saxophonists of his generation. At the age of eleven he entered the first intake of the Collège de jazz at Marciac, the Gers town that hosts the Jazz in Marciac festival, where his teachers included the bassist Pierre Boussaguet, the tenor saxophonist Guy Lafitte and the saxophonist Christian "Tonton" Salut. From 1996 he studied classical and contemporary music at the Conservatoire de Toulouse, and during those years the Marciac festival gave him the chance to play alongside Wynton Marsalis, Christian McBride, Johnny Griffin and Bobby Hutcherson.

He moved to Paris in 2000. A self-released CD under the name Ephemere Quintet, Famimra, dates from that year, and in 2004 he founded his own quartet with the pianist Julien Touéry, the bassist Ivan Gélugne and the drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq. The group, billed as the Émile Parisien Quartet, made three records for the Laborie label, Au revoir porc-épic (2006), Original Pimpant (2009) and Chien Guêpe (2012). The SACEM, the French authors' and composers' society, named him one of its Talents Jazz for three consecutive years from 2007, and in 2009 he won the Victoires du Jazz award for French instrumental revelation of the year (the Frank Ténot prize). In 2012 he played on Sweet & Sour, a record by the drummer Daniel Humair that also featured the accordionist Vincent Peirani, and in 2012 the Académie du Jazz gave him its Prix Django-Reinhardt, presented in January 2013.

The German label ACT became his home from 2014. Spezial Snack, the quartet's first ACT album, appeared in September 2014, six months after Belle Époque, a duo record with Peirani that opened a partnership which has since produced Out of Land (2017, with the pianist Michael Wollny and the vocalist Andreas Schaerer) and Abrazo (2020). In 2014 the Victoires du Jazz named him artist of the year. With the German pianist Joachim Kühn he recorded Sfumato (2016), a quintet record with Michel Portal and Peirani as guests on several tracks. It received the Victoires du Jazz award for album sensation of the year in 2017, and a live follow-up, Sfumato Live in Marciac, appeared in 2018. In June 2017 he also won the German Echo Jazz award as international instrumentalist. In 2018 he appeared with Wollny's trio on the live album Wartburg, the quartet released Double Screening in 2019, and XXXX (2021) paired him with Wollny, the bassist Tim Lefebvre and the drummer Christian Lillinger.

Louise (2022) is a sextet record with the pianist Roberto Negro, the guitarist Manu Codjia, the trumpeter Theo Croker, the bassist Joe Martin and the drummer Nasheet Waits. Negro, who had already recorded with him in the trio Dadada (Saison 3, 2017, with the percussionist Michele Rabbia), also made the duo album Les Métanuits (2023) with him, and the Académie Charles-Cros gave it a Coup de coeur in jazz and blues. In 2023 he joined Peirani, the kora player Ballaké Sissoko and the cellist Vincent Ségal for Les Égarés (Nø Førmat!), which was followed by Sou Kora in 2025. His quartet returned with Let Them Cook (2024), recorded with electronics, which won jazz album of the year at the 2024 Victoires du Jazz. In 2021 he also made the live album Into the Night as a trio with the pianist Jan Lundgren and the bassist Lars Danielsson.

His most recent records are two ACT releases of 2026: Freiheit, a live duo album with Wollny released in May, and Floating (ACT 8048-2), issued on September 25 with a quartet of the pianist Yaron Herman, the bassist Linda May Han Oh and the percussionist Prabhu Edouard. He is based in Paris.

Parisien plays soprano and alto saxophone, with soprano his main voice, and the credits on Sfumato, Chien Guêpe and Alter Ego add tenor saxophone. AllMusic describes him as one of Europe's foremost soprano saxophonists and files his music under modern creative jazz and post-bop, listing John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis among the influences on his sound; English Wikipedia adds that the writing of his quartet draws on Hector Berlioz, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Wagner as well as Coltrane and Shorter, and that improvisation takes precedence in it. A DownBeat review of Louise by Martin Longley (March 2022) calls his solo playing intense and technically brilliant, with a sense of humour, and singles out the fast, accurate soprano on "Jojo" and the three-part suite "Memento". He works in very different company, from the acoustic quartet of his Laborie years through the electronics of Let Them Cook to duos with the accordionist Vincent Peirani and the pianist Michael Wollny and a quartet with the Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko. Recognition includes Victoires du Jazz awards in 2009, 2014, 2017 and 2024, the Prix Django-Reinhardt (2012) and the Echo Jazz award (2017).