 He was awarded several grants from the Canada Council and has been commissioned to write works for the Arthur-LeBlanc String Quartet, the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Musica Nova Ensemble, and the Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra.Desjardins studied music composition with Bruce Mather at McGill University where he earned a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music, and obtained a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan.He taught on the music faculty of the Université de Sherbrooke from 1993 to 2002 and is currently a member of the music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.