It was one of those rare moments at a live gig when you realise you've been in the presence of greatness, - Michael Hubbard, Music OMH
With a live review such as this ... how excited are we that multi-instrumentalist YANN TIERSEN is returning to our shores !! The answer is ...VERY!!! Classical composer, virtuoso performer, street entertainer, rock musician – Genius!!?? You’ll have to see him to believe the vast scope that this French avant-garde performer has mastered.
YANN TIERSEN has been honing his musical aesthetic since he could stand on two legs. Born in 1970 in Brittany, France, he started learning piano at the age of four, violin at the age of six and receiving classical training at musical academies in Rennes, Nantes and Boulogne. Then, at the age of 13, he chose to alter his destiny, breaking his violin into pieces, buying a guitar and forming a rock band.
When his band broke up a few years later, instead of hunting for some new musicians, he bought a cheap mixing desk, an eight-track reel, and started recording music solo with a synth, sampler and drum machine, poring over the grooves of old records on the hunt for loops and orchestral strings to plunder. . "One day I thought, instead of spending days on research and listening to tons of records to find the nearest sound of what I have in mind, why don't I fix this fucking violin and use it?"
Through that summer of 1993, YANN TIERSEN stayed in his apartment, recording music alone with guitar, violin and accordion, guided not by the classical canon, but by intuition and his vision of "a musical anarchy" and re-emerged from his flat with 40 tracks which then fed into the bulk of his first two albums. The success of these albums launched into a run of beautiful film scores including the highly acclaimed film Amelie, Good Bye Lenin! & Tabarly.
Skyline is the seventh studio album by YANN TIERSEN and follows on from its darker sister, Dust Lane with Its ambitious new territory which gained endless praise for YANN and his most brilliant accompanying musicians.
This classically trained multi-instrumentalist will shock even his most fanatical fans with his live performance. Transfixing even the most unenthused amongst the crowd with an accordion solo, a feat thought by most to be impossible, turning it into the subtlest and most seductive of instruments. Then switching it up and playing the accordion and piano simultaneously and delightfully.
“Here was a man making electricity spark from an acoustic instrument before our very eyes … His playing was enough to make members of his audience weep at its beauty....and a lovely warm feeling envelopes you as you head home.” - Michael Hubbard MUSIC OMH
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