16 mm film showing a "variable area" sound track at right.

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.

Origin of the term[link]

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track (dialogue track, sound effects track, and music track), and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track (music and effects) containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

The contraction soundtrack came into public consciousness with the advent of so-called "soundtrack albums" in the early 1950s. First conceived by movie companies as a promotional gimmick for new films, these commercially available recordings were labeled and advertised as "music from the original motion picture soundtrack." This phrase was soon shortened to just "original motion picture soundtrack." More accurately, such recordings are made from a film's music track, because they usually consist of the isolated music from a film, not the composite (sound) track with dialogue and sound effects.

The abbreviation OST is often used to describe the musical soundtrack on a recorded medium, such as CD, and it stands for Original Soundtrack; however, it is sometimes also used to differentiate the original music heard and recorded versus a rerecording or cover of the music.

Types of recordings[link]

In the soundtrack genre there are four types of recordings:

1. Musical film soundtracks which concentrate primarily on the songs
   (Examples: Grease, Singin' in the Rain)
2. Film scores which showcase the background music from non-musicals
   (Examples: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings)
3. Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of non-musicals
   (Examples: Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally...)
4. Video game soundtracks are often released after a game's release, usually consisting of the background music from the game's levels, menus, title screens, promo material (such as entire songs that only segments of which were used in the game), cut-screens and occasionally sound-effects used in the game
   (Examples: Sonic Heroes, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)

The soundtrack to the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first commercially issued film soundtrack^[1]. It was released in January 1938 as Songs from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with the Same Characters and Sound Effects as in the Film of That Title) and has since seen numerous expansions and reissues.

The first musical film to have a commercially issued soundtrack album was MGM’s film biography of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern, Till the Clouds Roll By. The album was originally issued as a set of four 10-inch 78-rpm records. Only eight selections from the film were included in this first edition of the album. In order to fit the songs onto the record sides the musical material needed editing and manipulation. This was before tape existed, so the record producer needed to copy segments from the playback discs used on set, the copy and re-copy them from one disc to another adding transitions and cross-fades until the final master was created. Needless to say, it was several generations removed from the original and the sound quality suffered for it. The playback recordings were purposely recorded very "dry" (without reverberation); otherwise it would come across as too hollow sounding in large movie theatres. This made these albums sound flat and boxy.

MGM Records called these "original cast albums" in the style of Decca's Broadway show cast albums. They also coined the phrase "recorded directly from the soundtrack." Over the years the term "soundtrack" began to be commonly applied to any recording from a film, whether taken from the actual film soundtrack or re-recorded in studio. The phrase is also sometimes incorrectly used for Broadway cast recordings. While it is correct to call a "soundtrack" a "cast recording" (since it represents the film cast) it is never correct to call a "cast recording" a "soundtrack." Among MGM's most notable soundtrack albums were those of the films Good News, Easter Parade, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin' in the Rain, Show Boat, The Band Wagon, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Gigi.

Film score albums did not really become popular until the LP era, although a few were issued in 78-rpm albums. Alex North’s score for the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire was released on a 10-inch LP by Capitol Records and sold so well that the label later re-released it on one side of a 12-inch LP with some of Max Steiner's film music on the reverse.

Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind has been recorded many times, but when the film was reissued in 1967, MGM Records finally released an album of the famous score recorded directly from the soundtrack. Like the 1967 re-release of the film, this version of the score was artificially "enhanced for stereo". In recent years, Rhino Records has released a 2-CD set of the complete Gone With the Wind score, restored to its original mono sound.

One of the biggest-selling film scores of all time was John Williams's music from the movie Star Wars. Many film score albums go out-of-print after the films finish their theatrical runs and some have become extremely rare collectors’ items.

In a few rare instances an entire film dialogue track was issued on records. The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet was issued as a 4-LP set, as a single LP with musical and dialogue excerpts, and as an album containing only the film's musical score. The ground-breaking film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was issued by Warner Bros Records as a 2-LP set containing virtually all the dialogue from the film. RCA Victor also issued a 2-LP set what was virtually all the dialogue from the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons.

Movie and television soundtracks[link]

The term soundtrack now most commonly refers to the music used in a movie (or television show), and/or to an album sold containing that music. Sometimes, the music has been recorded just for the film or album (e.g. Saturday Night Fever). Often, but not always, and depending on the type of movie, the soundtrack album will contain portions of the score, music composed for dramatic effect as the movie's plot occurs. In 1908, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the first music specifically for use in a motion picture (L'assasinat du duc de Guise), and releasing recordings of songs used in films became prevalent in the 1930s. Henry Mancini, who won an Emmy Award and two Grammys for his soundtrack to Peter Gunn, was the first composer to have a widespread hit with a song from a soundtrack.

By convention, a soundtrack record can contain all kinds of music including music "inspired by" but not actually appearing in the movie; the score contains only music by the original film's composer(s).^[2]

Video game soundtracks[link]

Soundtrack may also refer to music used in video games. While sound effects were nearly universally used for action happening in the game, music to accompany the gameplay was a later development. Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway were early composers of music specifically for video games for the 1980s Commodore 64 computer. Koji Kondo was an early and important composer for Nintendo games. As the technology improved, polyphonic and often orchestral soundtracks replaced simple monophonic melodies starting in the late 1980s and the soundtracks to popular games such as the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series began to be released separately. In addition to compositions written specifically for video games, the advent of CD technology allowed developers to incorporate licensed songs into their soundtrack (the Grand Theft Auto series is a good example of this). Furthermore, when Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001, it featured an option allowing users to customize the soundtrack for certain games by ripping a CD to the hard-drive.

Book soundtracks[link]

Only a few cases exist of an entire soundtrack being written specifically for a book.

A soundtrack for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was composed by Craig Russell for the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony. Commissioned in 1995, it was finally put on disk in 2000 by the San Luis Obispo Symphony.^{[citation needed]}

For the 1996 Star Wars novel Shadows of the Empire (written by author Steve Perry), Lucasfilm chose Joel McNeely to write a score. This was an eccentric, experimental project, in contrast to all other soundtracks, as the composer was allowed to convey general moods and themes, rather than having to write music to flow for specific scenes. A project called "Sine Fiction"^[3] has made some soundtracks to novels by science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, and has thus far released 19 soundtracks to science-fiction novels or short stories. All of them are available for free download.

Author L. Ron Hubbard composed and recorded a soundtrack album to his novel Battlefield Earth entitled Space Jazz. He marketed the concept album as "the only original sound track ever produced for a book before it becomes a movie". There are two other soundtracks to Hubbard novels, being Mission Earth by Edgar Winter and To the Stars by Chick Corea.

The 1985 novel Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, originally came in a box set with an audiocassette entitled Music and Poetry of the Kesh, featuring three performances of poetry, and ten musical compositions by Todd Barton.

In comics, Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron had an official soundtrack album. The original black-and-white Nexus #3 from Capitol comics included the "Flexi-Nexi" which was a soundtrack flexi-disc for the issue. Trosper by Jim Woodring included a soundtrack album composed and performed by Bill Frisell,^[4] and the Absolute Edition of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is planned to include an original vinyl record.

As Internet access became more widespread, a similar practice developed of accompanying a printed work with a downloadable theme song, rather than a complete and physically published album. The theme songs for Nextwave,^[5] Runaways,^[6] Achewood, Dinosaur Comics and Killroy and Tina are examples of this.

In Japan, such examples of music inspired by a work and not intended to soundtrack an radio play or motion picture adaptation of it are known as an "image album" or "image song," though this definition also includes such things as film score demos inspired by concept art and songs inspired by a TV series which do not feature in it. Many audio books have some form of musical accompaniment, but these are generally not extensive enough to be released as a separate soundtrack.

See also[link]

• Audio restoration
• Film score
• Image album
• Image song
• List of soundtrack composers
• Cast recording – for musical theater
• Soundtrack album
• SoundtrackNet
• Musivisual Language

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007)

External links[link]

• the Soundtrack INFO project
• Film Composers and Soundtracks
• Soundtrack.net trailer music reference
• Soundtrackcollector.com Soundtrack Database
• BIT12 - Best Italian Tutorial by Composer Stefano Lentini

Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer receiving his star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2010)
Background information
Birth name	Hans Florian Zimmer
Born	(1957-09-12) 12 September 1957 (age 54) Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Genres	Film score, Video game score
Occupations	Film composer, Video game composer, Music producer
Instruments	Piano, Keyboard, MIDI Master Keyboard, Synthesizer, Guitar
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Remote Control Productions
Website	hanszimmer.com

Hans Florian Zimmer, German pronunciation: [hans ˈfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; (born 12 September 1957) is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including award winning film scores for The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Gladiator (2000), The Last Samurai (2003),The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010).

Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios, and works with other composers through the company which he founded, Remote Control Productions.^[1]

Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Classical BRIT Award, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.^[2]

Early life[link]

Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons.^[3] He moved to London as a teenager, where he attended Hurtwood House school.^[4] In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: "My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend."^[5]

Early career[link]

Zimmer began his career playing keyboards and synthesizers. He worked with The Buggles, a New Wave band formed in 1977 with Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley. Zimmer can be seen briefly in The Buggles' music video for the 1979 song "Video Killed the Radio Star".^[6] After working with The Buggles, he started to work for the Italian group Krisma, a New Wave band formed in 1976 with Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser. He was a featured synthesist for Krisma’s third album, Cathode Mamma. He has also worked with the band Helden (with Warren Cann from Ultravox).^[7] Both Zimmer (on keyboards) and Cann (on drums), were invited to be part of the Spanish group Mecano for a live performance in Segovia (Spain) in 1984. Two songs from this concert were included in the "Mecano: En Concierto" album released in 1985 only in Spain. In 1980 Zimmer co-produced a single, "The History Of The World Part 1," with, and for, UK Punk band The Damned, which was also included on their 1980 LP release, "The Black Album," and carried the description of his efforts as "Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer."

While living in London, Zimmer wrote advertising jingles for Air-Edel Associates.^[7] In the 1980s, Zimmer partnered with Stanley Myers, a prolific film composer who wrote the scores for over sixty films. Zimmer and Myers co–founded the London–based Lillie Yard recording studio. Together, Myers and Zimmer worked on fusing the traditional orchestral sound with electronic instruments.^[8] Some of the films on which Zimmer and Myers worked are Moonlighting (1982), Success is the Best Revenge (1984), Insignificance (1985), and My Beautiful Launderette (1985). Zimmer's first solo score was Terminal Exposure for director Nico Mastorakis in 1987, for which he also wrote the songs. Zimmer acted as score producer for the 1987 film The Last Emperor, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.^[7]

One of Zimmer's most durable works from his time in the United Kingdom is the theme song for the television game show Going for Gold, which he composed with Sandy McClelland in 1987. In an interview with the BBC, Zimmer said: "Going For Gold was a lot of fun. It's the sort of stuff you do when you don't have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time."^[9]

Hollywood film scoring[link]

A turning point in Zimmer's career occurred with the 1988 film Rain Man.^[8] Hollywood director Barry Levinson was looking for someone to score Rain Man, and his wife heard the soundtrack CD of the anti-Apartheid drama A World Apart, for which Zimmer had composed the music. Levinson was impressed by Zimmer's work, and hired him to score Rain Man.^[10] In the score, Zimmer uses synthesizers (mostly a Fairlight CMI) mixed with steel drums. Zimmer explained that "It was a road movie, and road movies usually have jangly guitars or a bunch of strings. I kept thinking don't be bigger than the characters. Try to keep it contained. The Raymond character doesn't actually know where he is. The world is so different to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don't we just invent our own world music for a world that doesn't really exist?".^[11] Zimmer’s score for Rain Man was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989, and the film won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.^[12]

A year after Rain Man, Zimmer was asked to compose the score for Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy which, like Rain Man, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Driving Miss Daisy’s instrumentation consisted entirely of synthesizers and samplers, played by Zimmer. According to an interview with Sound On Sound magazine in 2002, the piano sounds heard within the score come from the Roland MKS–20, a rackmount synthesizer. Zimmer joked: "It didn't sound anything like a piano, but it behaved like a piano."^[13]

1991's Thelma & Louise soundtrack by Zimmer featured the trademark slide guitar performance by Pete Haycock on the "Thunderbird" theme in the film. As a teenager, Zimmer was a fan of Haycock, and their collaboration on film scores includes K2 and Drop Zone.^[14]

For the 1992 film The Power of One, Zimmer traveled to Africa in order to use African choirs and drums in the recording of the score. On the strength of this work, Disney Animation Studios approached Zimmer to compose the score for the 1994 film The Lion King. This was to be his first score for an animated film. Zimmer said that he had wanted to go to South Africa to record parts of the soundtrack, but was unable to visit the country as he had a police record there "for doing 'subversive' movies" after his work on The Power of One. Disney studio bosses expressed fears that Zimmer would be killed if he went to South Africa, so the recording of the choirs was organized during a visit by Lebo M.^[15] Zimmer won numerous awards for his work on The Lion King, including an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, and two Grammys. In 1997, the score was adapted into a Broadway musical version which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1998.^[16][17] As of April 2012^[update], the musical version of The Lion King is the highest grossing Broadway show of all time, having grossed $853.8 million.^[18]

	Crimson Tide - "Roll Tide" noicon A clip from the score of the 1995 film Crimson Tide.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Zimmer's score for Crimson Tide (1995) won a Grammy Award for the main theme, which makes heavy use of synthesizers in place of traditional orchestral instruments. For The Thin Red Line (1998), Zimmer said that the director Terrence Malick wanted the music before he started filming, so he recorded six and a half hours of music.^[11] Zimmer's next project was The Prince of Egypt (1998), which was produced by DreamWorks Animation. He introduced Ofra Haza, an Israeli Yemenite singer, to the directors, and they thought she was so beautiful that they designed one of the characters in the film to look like her.^[11]

Work: 2000–present[link]

	Gladiator - "Battle" noicon A clip from the score of the 2000 film Gladiator.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In the 2000s, Zimmer has composed scores for Hollywood blockbuster films including Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down and Hannibal (2001), The Last Samurai (2003), The Da Vinci Code (2006) The Simpsons Movie (2007), Angels and Demons (2009) and Sherlock Holmes (2009). While writing the score for The Last Samurai, Zimmer felt that his knowledge of Japanese music was extremely limited. He began doing extensive research, but the more he studied, the less he felt he knew. Finally, Zimmer took what he had written to Japan for feedback and was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music.^[11]

During the scoring of The Last Samurai in early 2003, Zimmer was approached by the producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with whom he had worked previously on Crimson Tide, The Rock and Pearl Harbor. Bruckheimer had finished shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, but was unhappy with the music composed for the film by Alan Silvestri and wanted a replacement score.^[19] Bruckheimer wanted Zimmer to rescore the film, but due to his commitments on The Last Samurai, the task of composing and supervising music for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was given to Klaus Badelt, one of Zimmer's colleagues at Media Ventures. Zimmer provided some themes that were used in the film, although he is not credited on screen.^[20][21] Zimmer was hired as the composer for the three subsequent films in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), collaborating with Rodrigo y Gabriela.^[22]

For the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, "The Daily Variety" reported that Zimmer purchased an out-of-tune piano for 200 dollars and used it throughout the scoring process because of its "quirkiness".^[23]

Hans Zimmer in 2008

Zimmer is also noted for his work on the scores of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008), on which he collaborated with James Newton Howard.^[9] The scores for these films were disqualified from receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score due to too many composers being listed on the cue sheet.^[24] Zimmer succeeded in reversing the decision not to nominate The Dark Knight in December 2008, arguing that the process of creating a modern film score was collaborative, and that it was important to credit a range of people who had played a part in its production.^[25] Zimmer explained his approach to scoring with other musicians in an interview with Soundtrack.net in 2006:

	Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard - "Now We Are Free" noicon A clip from the score of the 2000 film Gladiator.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

"Originally I had this idea that it should be possible to create some kind of community around this kind of work, and I think by muddying the titles - not having "you are the composer, you are the arranger, you are the orchestrator" - it just sort of helped us to work more collaboratively. It wasn't that important to me that I had "score by Hans Zimmer" and took sole credit on these things. It's like Gladiator: I gave Lisa Gerrard the co-credit because, even though she didn't write the main theme, her presence and contributions were very influential. She was more than just a soloist, and this is why I have such a problem with specific credits."^[26]

Zimmer is also composing the score for The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. The film is scheduled for release in July 2012.^[27]

Zimmer works with other composers through his company Remote Control Productions, formerly known as Media Ventures. His studio in Santa Monica, California has an extensive range of computer equipment and keyboards, allowing demo versions of film scores to be created quickly.^[28] His colleagues at the studio have included Harry Gregson-Williams, James Dooley, Geoff Zanelli, Henning Lohner, Steve Jablonsky, Mark Mancina, John Van Tongeren, John Powell and Thomas J. Bergersen.

In October 2000, Zimmer performed live in concert for the first time with an orchestra and choir at the 27th Annual Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent.^[29] He has received a range of honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in film Composition from the National Board of Review, the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement, and BMI's Richard Kirk Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. Recent work includes the Spanish language film Casi Divas,^[30] Sherlock Holmes, The Burning Plain (2009), and Inception (2010). He composed the theme for the television boxing series The Contender, and worked with Lorne Balfe on the music for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was his first video game project.^[31] Zimmer also collaborated with composers Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu to create the score for the video game Crysis 2.^[32]

In December 2010, Zimmer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He dedicated the award to his publicist and long term friend Ronni Chasen, who was shot dead in Beverly Hills the previous month.^[33]

Zimmer composed and produced the music for the 84th Academy Awards with Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes.^[34]

Zimmer lives in Los Angeles with his wife Suzanne, and has four children.^[35][36]

Discography and awards[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

	Book: Hans Zimmer
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hans Zimmer

• Official website
• Hans Zimmer at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Hans Zimmer in Film Score Monthly
• Interview with Hans Zimmer about Sherlock Holmes from C Music TV
• Focus.De

v t e Hans Zimmer Soundtracks Angels and Demons  · Driving Miss Daisy  · Batman Begins  · Beyond Rangoon  · Black Hawk Down  · The Da Vinci Code  · The Dark Knight  · Gladiator  · Inception · Kung Fu Panda  · Kung Fu Panda 2  · The Lion King  · Madagascar  · Mission: Impossible II  · Pearl Harbor  · Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End  · Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl  · Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest  · Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides  · Pirates of the Caribbean: Soundtrack Treasures Collection · Rango  · Sherlock Holmes  · The Thin Red Line Songs "Hoist the Colours" Related articles Discography · Remote Control Productions Book:Hans Zimmer  · Category:Hans Zimmer

Yann Tiersen
Background information
Birth name	Yann Pierre Tiersen
Born	(1970-06-23) 23 June 1970 (age 42)
Origin	Brest, Brittany, France
Genres	Minimalist, avant-garde
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Piano, violin, accordion, guitar, toy piano, voice, and various others
Years active	1995–present
Labels	Sine Terra Firma, Ici, d'ailleurs..., EMI, Virgin, Mute, ANTI-
Associated acts	Claire Pichet, Dominique A, Françoiz Breut, Natacha Régnier, Shannon Wright
Website	link

Yann Tiersen (born 23 June 1970) is a musician from France.^[1][2] His musical career is split between studio albums, collaborations and film soundtracks with a distinctive sound that is always involved. It can be recognized by its use of a large variety of instruments; primarily the guitar, synthesizer or violin together with instruments like the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, harpsichord, accordion and typewriter.

Tiersen is often mistaken as a composer of soundtracks, himself saying "I'm not a composer and I really don't have a classical background",^[3] but his real focus is on touring and studio albums which just happen to often be suitable for film. His most famous soundtrack for the film Amélie was primarily made up of tracks taken from his first two studio albums.^[4]

Biography and career[link]

The early years: 1970–1992[link]

Yann Tiersen was born in Brest in the Finistère département in Brittany in northwestern France, in 1970, into a family of Belgian and Norwegian origins.^[5] He started learning piano at the age of four, violin at the age of six, and received classical training at several musical academies, including those in Rennes, Nantes, and Boulogne.^[6] In the early 1980s when he was a teenager he was influenced by the punk subculture, and bands like The Stooges and Joy Division.^[7] In 1983, at the age of 13, he broke his violin, bought an electric guitar, and formed a rock band. Tiersen was now living in Rennes, and this turned out to be the perfect place for his musical career. In fact, Rennes is home to the three-day music festival Rencontres Trans Musicales, held annually in December, giving him the opportunity to see acts like Nirvana, Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cramps, Television, and Suicide. A few years later, when his band broke up, Tiersen bought a cheap mixing desk, an 8-track reel-to-reel audio tape recording, and started recording music solo with a synthesizer, a sampler, and a drum machine.^[8]

Debut and national acclaim: 1993–2000[link]

Before releasing film scores under his own name, Tiersen recorded background music for a number of plays and short films. In the summer of 1993, Tiersen stayed in his apartment, recording music alone with an electric guitar, a violin, and an accordion, guided by his vision of “a musical anarchy”. By the end of that summer, Tiersen had recorded over forty tracks, which would form most of his first two albums. Tiersen's debut album, La Valse des monstres, limited to 1,000 copies only, was released in June 1995 by independent record label Sine Terra Firma, and then it was reissued by Nancy-based record label Ici d'ailleurs in 1998 as the second album of its catalogue. The 17-track album was inspired by and written for the theatrical adaptations of Tod Browning's 1932 cult classic Freaks, and Yukio Mishima's 1955 version of Noh play The Damask Drum. One year later, in April 1996, he released Rue des cascades, a collection of short pieces recorded with toy piano, harpsichord, violin, accordion, and mandolin. The title track, sung by French soloist singer Claire Pichet, will be used about one year later for the Palme d'Or nominated French drama film The Dreamlife of Angels,^[9] and several tracks will find a much larger audience five years later when they were featured on the soundtrack to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie.^[8] Tiersen played almost all the instruments both in the studio and in concert, and this gave him a theatrical appeal as a one-man show, which allowed him to perform, among others, at the 1996 edition of the Avignon Festival, the oldest extant festival in France and one of the world's greatest.^[10]

Tiersen rose to domestic fame upon the release of his third studio album, Le Phare (English: The Light House) in 1998. The album was recorded in a self-imposed seclusion on the isle of Ushant (Breton: Enez Eusa, French: Ouessant) at the south-western end of the English Channel which marks the north-westernmost point of metropolitan France, where Tiersen spent two months living in a rented house. At night, he watched the Phare du Creach (English: Kreac'h or Créac'h lighthouse), one of the most powerful lighthouse in the world, and was fascinated by the stunning scenery repeated every night. Le Phare, which featured Claire Pichet, French singer and songwriter Dominique A, and French drummer and percussionist Sacha Toorop, went on to sell over 160,000 copies, confirming Tiersen's status as one of the most pioneering and original artists of his generation and commencing a run of successful albums.^[8] Three songs from this album, "La Dispute", "La Noyee", and "Sur le fil" were used later for the soundtrack of Amélie, while "L'Homme aux bras ballants", written and composed by Dominique A, was also the soundtrack to Laurent Gorgiard's 1997 short animation film by the same name. Its single, "Monochrome", sung by Dominique A, was a radio hit and propelled the album. Le Phare was his first album to chart climbing to number 50 in the French Albums Chart.^[11]

In that period Tiersen provided a new arrangement and played strings, vibraphone, bell, mandolin, electric guitar, and bass guitar for the song "À ton étoile" by French rock band Noir Désir on their 1998 remix album One Trip/One Noise,^[12] recorded background music for the award-winning and multi-nominated film The Dreamlife of Angels (French: La Vie rêvée des anges),^[9][13] for André Téchiné's Alice et Martin, released in 1998, and Christine Carrière's Qui plume la lune?, released in 1999, and also recorded Bästard ~ Yann Tiersen, a 3-track extended play released in 1998 in collaboration with French electronic rock band Bästard, and his first live album, Black Session: Yann Tiersen. The live album was recorded on 2 December 1998 as the opening act of the Rencontres Trans Musicales in the Salle Serreau at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes, for the C'est Lenoir show broadcasted on the French public radio station France Inter. The album, which features Northern Irish singer, songwriter, and frontman of the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy Neil Hannon, singer and songwriter Bertrand Cantat of Noir Désir, singer and illustrator Françoiz Breut, anglophone French rock band The Married Monk (Christian Quermalet, Philippe Lebruman, Etienne Jaumet, Nicolas Courret), French folk rock group Têtes Raides (Christian Olivier, Grègoire Simon, Pascal Olivier, Anne-Gaëlle Bisquay, Serge Bégout, Jean-Luc Millot, and Edith Bégou), the string quartet Quatuor à cordes, guitarist and composer Olivier Mellano, and author Mathieu Boogaerts, as well as his usual collaborators and friends, Claire Pichet and Dominique A, was recorded by France International, mastered by Radio France, and released in CD format one year later on 2 November 1999.^[14]

In 1999, Tiersen with The Married Monk, Claire Pichet, and Olivier Mellano, released his first collaboration album, Tout est calme. The 26 minutes, 10 tracks mini album peaked at number 45 on the French Albums Chart.^[11][15] The album produced one single, "Les Grandes marées", and Tiersen also featured on The Divine Comedy's single "Gin Soaked Boy" released on that same year, on three tracks for Françoiz Breut's second studio album Vingt à Trente Mille Jours (English: Twenty to Thirty Thousand Days), and on Têtes Raides' Gratte-poil, both released in 2000.

[edit] Amélie and global recognition: 2001–2009

Tiersen remained relatively unknown outside France until the release of his score for the acclaimed film Amélie (Original French title: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, English: The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain) in 2001. French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet had something else in mind for the film score, but one day one of his production assistants put on a CD of Tiersen, and the director found it absolutely superb. Jeunet bought all of Tiersen's albums, and then contacted him to see if the Breton composer was interested in writing the film score for Amélie. In two weeks, Tiersen composed nineteen pieces for the film and also allowed the production to take anything they wanted from his other records.^[16] Amélie received great critical acclaim and was a box-office success. The film went on to win the Best Film award at the European Film Awards, four César Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, two BAFTA Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. The soundtrack was a mixture of both new and previously released material, and Tiersen was also the recipient of the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film, and of the World Soundtrack Academy award. The soundtrack album charted in many countries, including the number one position on the French Albums Chart.^[17][2]

While he was writing the film score for Amélie Tiersen was also preparing his fifth studio album L'Absente.^[2] The album was characterized by several contributions including 35-member Ensemble Orchestral Synaxis conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne, viola player Bertrand Lambert, violinists Yann Bisquay and Sophie Naboulay, Natacha Régnier, and saxophonist Grégoire Simon, and long-time collaborators Dominique A, Christine Ott, Lisa Germano, Neil Hannon, Têtes Raides, Christian Quermalet, Marc Sens, and Sacha Toorop. The album, which was released on 5 June 2001 through EMI France, was preceded by two promotional singles for "A quai" and "Bagatelle" respectively. Tiersen provided strings and vibraphone to two tracks, "Roma Amor" and "Holidays", featured on The Married Monk's compilation album of the same name.

At this time he was married to Belgian actress Natacha Régnier, co-star of The Dreamlife of Angels. Régnier become a singer and 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. That same year they went on tour in France and abroad. They have a daughter, Lise, born in 2002, but they have since been divorced.^[18] In this period, Tiersen also took his music out around the world, playing shows with a full orchestra and an amplified string quartet.^[8] On 15, 16, and 17 February 2002, Tiersen with many of the collaborators who participated in the recording sessions for L'Absente plus Claire Pichet, violinists Nicholas Stevens and Renaud Lhoest, bassist Jean-François Assy, viola player Olivier Tilkin, and uilleann pipes, bagpipes, and low whistle player Ronan Le Bars, performed live at the Cité de la Musique (English: City of Music) in Paris. Part of these three concerts went on to form Tiersen's second live album C'était ici (English: It Was Here), which was released through EMI France on 30 September 2002.^[19]

Tiersen's skills as a composer of film scores were much in demand, and the soundtrack for Amélie was soon followed by the film score for Good Bye, Lenin!, a 2003 German tragicomedy film directed by Wolfgang Becker.^[8] The film was both a commercial and a critical success and won several awards including the César Award for Best Film from the European Union, Best Film at the European Film Awards, the German Film Awards for Outstanding Film, Best European Film at the Goya Awards, Best Foreign Language Film for the London Film Critics' Circle, and it was also listed in the Empire magazine 2010's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema"^[20] Tiersen was the recipient of the German Film Awards for Outstanding Music. On 15 November 2003, Tiersen with Stuart A. Staples, the lead singer of indie band Tindersticks, actress and singer Jane Birkin, singer and vocalist for Cocteau Twins Elizabeth Fraser, singer and songwriter Christophe Miossec, and Dominique A released 3 titres inédits au profit de la FIDH (English: 3 New Tracks for the Benefit of FIDH), a 3-track CD that was part of the On Aime, On Aide benefit collection for raising funds for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).^[21]

Tiersen's list of collaborators continues to grow album after album and in October 2004 released Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright, a collaboration album with American singer-songwriter Shannon Wright, was released in October 2004, and in the same year he is featured on The Divine Comedy's album Absent Friends. In 2005, Tiersen released his fifth studio album Les Retrouvailles. The album features several collaborators including the Orchestre National de Paris, singers Elizabeth Fraser, Jane Birkin, Stuart A. Staples, Dominique A, and Miossec, strings players Jean-François Assy, Frederic Dessus, Guillaume Fontanarosa, Bertrand Causse, Anne Causse Biragnet, Armelle Legoff, Frédéric Haffner, flute player Elliott, drummer Ludovic Morillon, and ondes Martenot player Christine Ott. Les Retrouvailles also includes a DVD short film entitled La Traversée, directed by Aurélie du Boys, which documents the making of the album in Ushant, and incorporates an animated video for the non-album track, "Le Train", and also live versions of a handful of songs. The album produced a single, "Kala", sung by Elizabeth Fraser, and Tiersen also played piano on Staples' solo debut album, Lucky Dog Recordings 03-04. The subsequent world tour of 2006 replaced the multi-instrumental ensemble with electric guitars and an ondes Martenot, and produced his third live album, On Tour, which was released together with a DVD, directed by Aurélie du Boys, about the tour, in November 2006. In 2006, he also released two singles, "La Mancha" and "La Rade", and he was featured on The Endless Rise of the Sun, third studio album by electronic group Smooth, Raides à la ville extended play by Katel, and 13m² by David Delabrosse.

2008 saw his return after a five years absence as a composer of film scores when he provided the background music for Tabarly, a Pierre Marcel's documentary film about the French sailor, two-time champion of the Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, and father of French yachting Éric Tabarly. The documentary was released on June 2008 exactly ten years after his death. Éric Tabarly was lost at Irish Sea when struck by a gaff of his Pen Duick during heavy swell and knocked overboard from his yacht near Wales while on his way to the Fife Regatta in Scotland. His body was recovered five weeks later off the coast of Ireland by a French fishing trawler. The documentary, narrated by Tabarly himself, traces his sporting career until his last meal in Ushant.^[8] Before the end of the decade, Tiersen also contributed to Christine Ott's debut solo album Solitude Nomade, and to Miossec's seventh studio album Finistériens.

[edit] Dust Lane and Skyline: 2010–present

October 2010 saw the release of Tiersen’s sixth studio album titled Dust Lane. The album was two years in the making and was largely recorded in Ushant, France. Further parts were recorded in the Philippines. The album is preoccupied with mortality; during the recording sessions Tiersen lost his mother and a close friend. The recordings started out as simple song based tracks with Tiersen playing acoustic guitar, mandolin and bouzouki. New layers were added to the recordings creating a more complex sound. Then an array of vintage synthesisers and electric guitars were added to create further textures.^[22][23] The album was released by Mute Records in Europe and ANTI- Records in the US.^[24][25] The record was promoted in a tour beginning in October 2010, starting in New York. Dust Lane was preceded by the release of the vinyl EP PALESTINE and by the single for "Ashes". In 2010, Tiersen also 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 Li(f)e, the fourth solo studio album by hip-hop artist Sage Francis.

October 2011 saw the European release of his seventh studio album, Skyline. The nine-track album, a follow on from his Dark Lane, was once again recorded at Tiersen's home on the island of Ushant in the south-western end of the English Channel, with further parts recorded in Paris, San Francisco, Berlin, and Nashville. It was subsequently mixed by producer Ken Thomas in Leeds, and mastered by Ray Staff in London.^[8] The album produced the singles for "Monuments" and "I'm Gonna Live Anyhow". On 18 February 2012, Tiersen with Lionel Laquerriere, and Thomas Poli, presented his side project, Elektronische Staubband, at La Route du Rock music festival in Saint-Malo. It was about an hour of krautrock, electronic, and experimental music involving a dozen of synthesizers and analog keyboards with the first three pieces of the set list taken from Dust Lane and the remaining five from Skyline.^[26] Tiersen was also chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival on March 2012 in Minehead, England.^[27] Skyline was released in North America via ANTI- Records on 17 April 2012, and it was followed by the Skyline Tour with dates in the United States, Canada, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, France, Slovak Republic, Austria, Finland, and the United Kingdom.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Soundtracks[link]

Live albums[link]

Singles and EPs[link]

• Rue des cascades (7" vinyl EP) (1996)
• Black Session (EP promo) (1998)
• "La Vie rêvée des anges" (CD single) (1998)
• "Les Grandes marées" (1999)
• "Comptine d'un autre été : L'après-midi" (2001)
• "À quai" (CD single promo) (2001)
• "Bagatelle" (CD maxi promo) (2001)
• 3 titres inédits au profit de la FIDH (part of the On Aime, On Aide collection, composed to raise funds for the FIDH, sold exclusively at Fnac) (2003)
• "Kala" (2005)
• "La Mancha" (2006)
• "La Rade" (2006)
• PALESTINE (vinyl EP) (2010)
• "Ashes" (2010)
• "Monuments" (2011)
• "I'm Gonna Live Anyhow" (2011)

Collaborations[link]

Contributions[link]

• One Trip/One Noise (by Noir Désir) (1998)
  • "À ton étoile" (arrangements, strings, vibraphone, bell, mandolin, electric guitar and bass)
• "Gin Soaked Boy" (by The Divine Comedy) (1999)
• Vingt à Trente Mille Jours (by Françoiz Breut) (2000)
  • "Porsmouth" (vibraphone), "Vingt à trente mille jours" (vibraphone), "L'heure bleue" (violin), "Le verre pilé" (vibraphone); arrangements
• Gratte-poil (by Têtes Raides) (2000)
  • "Cabaret des nues" (violin)
• The Married Monk (by The Married Monk) (2001)
  • "Roma Amor" (strings, vibraphone), "Holidays" (strings) and "Cyro's Request" (vibraphone)
• Les oiseaux de passage (tribute to Georges Brassens) (2001)
  • cover of "Le parapluie" with Natacha Régnier
• Absent Friends (by The Divine Comedy) (2004)
  • "Sticks & Stones" (accordion); "Anthem for Bored Youth" (accordion), a track appearing only on the French limited edition
• Lucky Dog Recordings 03-04 (by Stuart A. Staples) (2005)
  • "She Don't Have to Be Good to Me" (piano)
• The Endless Rise of the Sun (by Smooth) (2006)
  • "The Endless Rise of the Sun" (keyboards)
• Raides à la ville (by Katel) (2006)
  • "La Vielle" (violin)
• 13m² (by David Delabrosse) (2006)
  • production and arrangements
• Solitude Nomade (by Christine Ott) (2009)
  • "Pensées sauvages" (violin)
• Finistériens (by Miossec) (2009)
  • music and arrangements
• Li(f)e (by Sage Francis) (2010)
  • production and arrangements on "The Best of Times"

DVDs[link]

See also[link]

• Tiersen

Notes[link]

References[link]