27 Facts About Yann Tiersen

Yann Tiersen was born in 1970 in Brest, in the department of Finistere, part of Brittany in northwestern France, into a French family of Belgian and Norwegian origins.

Yann Tiersen 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.

Yann 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.

Yann Tiersen rose to domestic fame upon the release of his third studio album, Le Phare in 1998.

Yann Tiersen spent two months there, living in a rented house.

The album produced one single, "Les Grandes marees", and Yann Tiersen featured on The Divine Comedy's single "Gin Soaked Boy" released on that same year, on three tracks for Francoiz Breut's second studio album Vingt a Trente Mille Jours, and on Tetes Raides' Gratte-poil, both released in 2000.

Yann Tiersen remained relatively unknown outside France until the release of his score for the acclaimed film Amelie in 2001.

In two weeks, Yann Tiersen composed nineteen pieces for the film and allowed the production to take anything they wanted from his other records.

The soundtrack was a mixture of both new and previously released material, and Yann Tiersen was the recipient of the Cesar Award for Best Music Written for a Film, and of the World Soundtrack Academy award.

Regnier became a singer and Yann 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.

Yann Tiersen was the recipient of the German Film Awards for Outstanding Music.

In 2005, Yann Tiersen released his fifth studio album Les Retrouvailles.

Yann Tiersen's body was recovered five weeks later off the coast of Ireland by a French fishing trawler.

The album is preoccupied with mortality; during the recording sessions Yann Tiersen lost his mother and a close friend.

The recordings started out as simple song based tracks with Yann Tiersen playing acoustic guitar, mandolin and bouzouki.

In 2010, Yann Tiersen contributed to the tribute album to cross-genre, experimental music group Coil The Dark Age of Love by This Immortal Coil, a one-off tribute formation, and to Lie, the fourth solo studio album by hip-hop artist Sage Francis.

Yann Tiersen was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in March 2012 in Minehead, England.

On 3 August 2016, it was announced that Yann Tiersen married Emilie Quinquis in Ushant, Brittany.

Quinquis stated that she and Yann Tiersen were married on 31 July 2016.

Yann Tiersen's music is influenced by the classical training he received as a child, by American and British punk subculture, and by the music he used to listen to as a teenager.

Yann Tiersen's delicate but deeply emotional style has been linked to Frederic Chopin and the other great masters of Romantic music, and to Erik Satie, the colourful figure of the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde whose work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.

Yann Tiersen started playing the piano and the violin at a young age.

Yann Tiersen only returned to his beginnings instrument years later, after searching for string sounds to sample.

Yann Tiersen plays all of these instruments himself either in the studio or on a live set.

Yann Tiersen returned to making film soundtracks in 2008 after a years-long break, creating the score for a documentary about the sailor Eric Tabarly.

Yann Tiersen has always composed his music in solitude, starting from simple melodies to which he added subsequent layers.

In 2011, Yann Tiersen collaborated with the Yellow Bird Project to design a t-shirt, which was sold to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres.