Yann Tiersen

Think of Yann Tiersen, and it’s hard not to think of the cobbled streets of Montmartre where Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s hit 2001 film Amélie is set. Tiersen’s quirky score—a combination of Michael Nyman-inspired piano ripples, folksy merry-go-round harmonies, with the quintessentially Parisian sound of the accordion—is the one that made him famous: it’s beautifully evocative, capturing the bittersweet euphoria of romantic love. Yet the composer, born in Brittany, France in 1970, has tried to distance himself from the film over the years, preferring instead to emphasise how he works with purely musical means. Many of the pieces on Amélie were taken from his earlier albums from the late 1990s—Rue des cascades and the breakthrough third album Le Phare—where he experiments with unusual instrumentation using eight-track recordings. On Le Phare, for example, you’ll hear a typewriter—perhaps echoing Satie’s 1917 ballet Parade—a bicycle wheel and saucepans. And as with Satie, simplicity is key to the enduring charm of Tiersen’s music, whether in his recent ambient electronic mixes or in the undulating minimalistic textures of his solo piano playing, inspired by Ushant, off the Brittany coast, where he lives.