Yann Tiersen

Yann Pierre Tiersen (born 23 June 1970) is a French Breton musician and composer. His musical career is split between studio recordings, music collaborations, and film soundtracks songwriting. His music incorporates a large variety of classical and contemporary instruments, primarily the electric guitar, the piano, synthesisers, and the violin, but he also includes instruments such as the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, harpsichord, piano accordion, and even a typewriter.

Tiersen is often mistaken for a soundtrack composer; he himself states that "I'm not a composer and I really don't have a classical background," but his real focus is on touring and recording studio albums, which are often used for film soundtracks. Tracks taken from his first three studio albums were used for the soundtrack of the 2001 French film Amélie.

Tiersen was born in 1970 in Brest, in the department of Finistère, part of Brittany in northwestern France, into a French family of Belgian and Norwegian origins. He started learning to play the piano at the age of four, the violin at the age of six, and received classical training at several musical academies, including those in Rennes, Nantes, and Boulogne-sur-Mer. In the early 1980s, he was influenced as a teenager by the punk subculture, and bands like The Stooges and Joy Division. When he was 13, he broke his violin, bought an electric guitar, and formed a rock band. Tiersen was living in Rennes back then, home to the three-day music festival Rencontres Trans Musicales, which is held annually in December. That gave him the opportunity to see acts like Nirvana, Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cramps, Television, and Suicide. A few years later, when his band parted, Tiersen bought a cheap mixing desk, an 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, and started recording music on his own with a synthesiser, a sampler, and a drum machine.

Before releasing film scores under his own name, Tiersen recorded background music for a number of plays and short films. During the summer of 1993, Tiersen stayed in his apartment with an electric guitar, a violin and a piano accordion, recording music on his own; he was guided by what he calls "a musical anarchic vision". By the end of the summer, Tiersen had recorded over forty tracks, which would most be used later on for his first two albums. Tiersen's debut album, La Valse des monstres, limited to 1,000 copies, was first released in June 1995 by independent record label Sine Terra Firma, and then reissued by Nancy-based record label Ici d'ailleurs in 1998 as the second album of its catalogue. The 17-track-album was inspired by and written for the theatrical adaptations of Tod Browning's 1932 cult classic Freaks, and Yukio Mishima's 1955 version of Noh play The Damask Drum. In April 1996, one year later, he released Rue des cascades, a collection of short pieces recorded with a toy piano, a harpsichord, a violin, a piano accordion, and a mandolin. The title track, sung by French solo singer Claire Pichet, was used the following year for the Palme d'Or nominated French drama film The Dreamlife of Angels, and several tracks received greater exposure when they were featured on the Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie, five years later. Tiersen usually plays most of the music instruments himself during both studio recording sessions and his live sets; he has won theatrical appeal as a one-man show and was invited to play, among others, at the 1996 edition of the Avignon Festival, the oldest live arts festival in France.

Tiersen rose to domestic fame upon the release of his third studio album, Le Phare (The Lighthouse) in 1998. The album was recorded in self-imposed seclusion on the isle of Ushant (Breton: Enez Eusa, French: Ouessant) at the end of the English Channel which marks the most north-western point of territorial France. Tiersen spent two months there, living in a rented house. At night-time, he would watch the Phare du Creach, one of the most powerful lighthouses in the world, and was fascinated by the stunning scenery repeated every night. Le Phare, which featured Claire Pichet, French singer and songwriter Dominique A, and Belgian drummer and percussionist Sacha Toorop, sold over 160,000 copies, confirming Tiersen's status as one of the most innovative artists of his generation and commencing a run of successful albums. Three songs from this album, "La Dispute", "La Noyée" and "Sur le fil" were later featured on the 2001 soundtrack Amélie, while "L'Homme aux bras ballants", written and composed by Dominique A, was also featured on Laurent Gorgiard's 1997 short animation soundtrack of the same name. Its single "Monochrome", sung by Dominique A, was a radio hit and propelled the album into the charts. Le Phare was his first album to climb to number 50 in the French Albums Chart.

During that period, Tiersen provided a new arrangement and played strings, vibraphone, bell, the mandolin, the electric guitar and bass guitar for the song "À ton étoile" by French rock band Noir Désir which was featured on their 1998 remix album One Trip/One Noise. He recorded songs for the soundtrack of several films, including the award-winning and multi-nominated film The Dreamlife of Angels (French: La Vie rêvée des anges) (1998), André Téchiné's Alice et Martin (1998) and Christine Carrière's Qui plume la lune? (1999). Tiersen also recorded Bästard ~ Yann Tiersen, a three-track-extended-play released in 1998 in collaboration with French electronic rock band Bästard, and his first live album, Black Session: Yann Tiersen. The live album was recorded on 2 December 1998 as he played the opening act of the Rencontres Trans Musicales in the Salle Serreau at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes, for the C'est Lenoir French broadcast show on the public radio station France Inter. The album features the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy fronted by Northern Irish singer and songwriter Neil Hannon, the French rock band Noir Désir with singer and songwriter Bertrand Cantat, singer and illustrator Françoiz Breut, French rock band The Married Monk (Christian Quermalet, Philippe Lebruman, Etienne Jaumet, Nicolas Courret), French folk rock group Les Têtes Raides (Christian Olivier, Grègoire Simon, Pascal Olivier, Anne-Gaëlle Bisquay, Serge Bégout, Jean-Luc Millot, and Edith Bégou), the string quartet Quatuor à cordes, guitarist and composer Olivier Mellano, and author Mathieu Boogaerts, as well as his usual collaborators and friends, Claire Pichet and Dominique A. The album was recorded by France International, mastered by Radio France, and released in CD format one year later on 2 November 1999.

In 1999, Tiersen together with The Married Monk, Claire Pichet, and Olivier Mellano released his first collaboration album, Tout est calme. The 26 minutes, 10 tracks mini album peaked at number 45 on the French Albums Chart. The album produced one single, "Les Grandes marées", and Tiersen also featured on The Divine Comedy's single "Gin Soaked Boy" released on that same year, on three tracks for Françoiz Breut's second studio album Vingt à Trente Mille Jours (English: Twenty to Thirty Thousand Days), and on Têtes Raides' Gratte-poil, both released in 2000.

Tiersen remained relatively unknown outside France until the release of his score for the acclaimed film Amélie (Original French title: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, English: The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain) in 2001. French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet had something else in mind for the film score, but one day one of his production assistants put on a CD of Tiersen, and the director found it absolutely superb. Jeunet bought all of Tiersen's albums, and then contacted him to see if the Breton composer was interested in writing the film score for Amélie. In two weeks, Tiersen composed nineteen pieces for the film and also allowed the production to take anything they wanted from his other records. Amélie received great critical acclaim and was a box-office success. The film went on to win the Best Film award at the European Film Awards, four César Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, two BAFTA Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. The soundtrack was a mixture of both new and previously released material, and Tiersen was also the recipient of the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film, and of the World Soundtrack Academy award. The soundtrack album charted in many countries, including the number one position on the French Albums Chart.

While he was writing the film score for Amélie, Tiersen was also preparing his fifth studio album L'Absente. The album was characterized by several contributions including 35-member Ensemble Orchestral Synaxis conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne, viola player Bertrand Lambert, violinists Yann Bisquay and Sophie Naboulay, Natacha Régnier, and saxophonist Grégoire Simon, and long-time collaborators Dominique A, Christine Ott, Lisa Germano, Neil Hannon, Têtes Raides, Christian Quermalet, Marc Sens, and Sacha Toorop. The album, which was released on 5 June 2001 through EMI France, was preceded by two promotional singles for "A quai" and "Bagatelle" respectively. Tiersen provided strings and vibraphone to two tracks, "Roma Amor" and "Holidays", featured on R/O/C/K/Y, the third studio album by The Married Monk.

At this time he was married to Belgian actress Natacha Régnier, co-star of The Dreamlife of Angels. Régnier became a singer and Tiersen wrote three songs for her including his arrangement of Georges Brassens' "Le Parapluie", a song featured on the tribute album Les Oiseaux de passage, released in 2001. That same year they toured in France and abroad. They have a daughter, Lise, born in 2002, but Tiersen and Régnier have since divorced. In this period, Tiersen also took his music out around the world, playing shows with a full orchestra and an amplified string quartet. From 15 to 17 February 2002, Tiersen with many of the collaborators who participated in the recording sessions for L'Absente plus Claire Pichet, violinists Nicolas Stevens and Renaud Lhoest, bassist Jean-François Assy, viola player Olivier Tilkin, and uilleann pipes, bagpipes, and low whistle player Ronan Le Bars, performed live at the Cité de la Musique (City of Music) in Paris. Part of these three concerts went on to form Tiersen's second live album C'était ici (It Was Here), which was released through EMI France on 30 September 2002.