As I indicated before I wanted to use this Great Music series to introduce some contemporary composers. This week I want to highlight the music of French composer, As I indicated before I wanted to use this Great Music series to introduce some contemporary composers. This week I want to highlight the music of French composer, Yann Tiersen. He was born in 1970 in Brest, France. At an early age he took piano and violin lessons and basically could play any musical instrument he could lay his hands on. At age 13 he “accidentally” broke his violin so he could play his guitar more, emulating the punk rock bands he loved.
Not knowing quite what to do with his musical gifts and being most proficient with an Accordian, he realized that the band, Nirvana really could not use him. Consequently, he bought some cheap recording equipment and started to compose music that could compliment his varied musical instruments. Some of the music of this time was released on record albums by local small time record companies. It was not until the movie producer of the French movie, Amelie, used much of Tiersen’s music from these early record albums that Tiersen received world wide acclaim as Amelie was nominated for an Acadamy Award. Since then a number of French movies, like Goodbye Lenin, have used Tiersen’s music as background to the movie scenes.
Currently, Tiersen continues to compose music which is hard to categorize as it is neither purely Classical nor Pop. He tours with a band he formed playing any and all his instruments including the piano, accordion, violin etc. In other words he is pursuing his childhood dream of playing with the band Nirvana, even those his current band sounds nothing like his dream band. To give you a taste of Tiersen’s music. The first selection is a video Comptine d`un autre ete – l`apres-midi. It happened to be the music behind a cartoon like video story of an elderly man reflecting on his life . One day I was surfing YouTube and my youngest son came into the room and said “dad, why don’t you click on the cartoon one”. I did and absolutely fell in love with the background music in the video and thus was born an appreciation of Tiersen’s music, something just about all my piano students eventually get to play and the other two selections are student favorites.
Comptine d’un autre- l’apres-midi
La Valse d’Amelie
Mothers Journey
. He was born in 1970 in Brest, France. At an early age he took piano and violin lessons and basically could play any musical instrument he could lay his hands on. At age 13 he “accidentally” broke his violin so he could play his guitar more, emulating the punk rock bands he loved.
Not knowing quite what to do with his musical gifts and being most proficient with an Accordian, he realized that the band, Nirvana really could not use him. Consequently, he bought some cheap recording equipment and started to compose music that could compliment his varied musical instruments. Some of the music of this time was released on record albums by local small time record companies. It was not until the movie producer of the French movie, Amelie, used much of Tiersen’s music from these early record albums that Tiersen received world wide acclaim as Amelie was nominated for an Acadamy Award. Since then a number of French movies, like Goodbye Lenin, have used Tiersen’s music as background to the movie scenes.
Currently, Tiersen continues to compose music which is hard to categorize as it is neither purely Classical nor Pop. He tours with a band he formed playing any and all his instruments including the piano, accordion, violin etc. In other words he is pursuing his childhood dream of playing with the band Nirvana, even those his current band sounds nothing like his dream band. To give you a taste of Tiersen’s music. The first selection is a video Comptine d`un autre ete – l`apres-midi. It happened to be the music behind a cartoon like video story of an elderly man reflecting on his life . One day I was surfing YouTube and my youngest son came into the room and said “dad, why don’t you click on the cartoon one”. I did and absolutely fell in love with the background music in the video and thus was born an appreciation of Tiersen’s music, something just about all my piano students eventually get to play and the other two selections are student favorites.
Comptine d’un autre- l’apres-midi
La Valse d’Amelie
Mothers Journey
Photo: Andrés Ibarra [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]