Yann Tiersen, musician and storyteller

It is commonly known that we all have songs which we may identify with whilst listening to them, maybe because of their lyrics or just due to the sounds of the instruments. Of all the possible singers and musicians I could choose from, I have chosen Yann Tiersen, a French musician who is best known for his unmistakable work in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amelie, as well as other great works.

Yann Tiersen was born in Brittany, France, on the 23rd of June 1970. From an early age he showed interest for music, and that ambition took him to study at different music academies in France including those in Rennes, Nantes and Boulogne, where he received classical training. In spite of this, in the early 1980s he was influenced by post-punk bands, such as The Stooges and Joy Division. In the 1990s, he composed the background music for many French plays and short films, such as La Vie Revee des Anges, Alice et Martin and Qui Plume la Lune?. The talent of this musician can also be seen in his amazing ability to play different instruments, because apart from playing conventional instruments such as the piano and guitar, he also plays not very common instruments, like the melodica, the xylophone, the toy piano, the harpsichord, the accordion and even the typewriter.

In my opinion, his music is very special and interesting because you can recognise it immediately when you just listen to it even if you do not know which piece is it. Tiersen has a very intimate style, which makes his music very different to any other musician's. As I see it, many people might enjoy listening to his compositions, because they have the ability to give you a hundred different feelings when listening to them, like happiness, sadness, homesickness, etc, depending on the mood of the person. Listening to, for example, the soundtrack J'y Suis Jamais Alle, you might suddenly want to move to Paris and walk down some ancient steps while you hear the sound of an accordion played by some busker at the bottom.

In conclusion, I think this man deserves the most respect in the world of music, not just for doing something different without caring if a huge mass of people will like and buy it, but also for having his own style, and the power of telling stories without saying a word, just with the use of his instruments.