Tiersen: Island Jeroen van Veen

• Yann Tiersen (b. 1970): Eusa:
• 1Tiersen: Eusa: I. Pern04:15
• 2Tiersen: Eusa: II. Porz Goret04:34
• 3Tiersen: Eusa: III. Lok Gweltaz03:11
• 4Tiersen: Eusa: IV. Penn Ar Roc'h02:50
• 5Tiersen: Eusa: V. Kereon02:31
• 6Tiersen: Eusa: VI. Yuzin01:28
• 7Tiersen: Eusa: VII. Roc'h Ar Vugale04:04
• 8Tiersen: Eusa: VIII. Penn Ar Lann04:06
• 9Tiersen: Eusa: IX. Enez Nein04:11
• 10Tiersen: Eusa: X. Kadoran03:04
• Kerber:
• 11Tiersen: Kerber: I. Kerlann04:42
• 12Tiersen: Kerber: II. Ar Maner Kozh04:30
• 13Tiersen: Kerber: III. Kerdrall05:58
• 14Tiersen: Kerber: IV. Ker Yegu03:37
• 15Tiersen: Kerber: V. Ker al Loch06:07
• 16Tiersen: Kerber: VI. Kerber09:25
• 17Tiersen: Kerber: VII. Poull Bojer06:29
• Total Runtime01:15:02

Info for Tiersen: Island

Yann Tiersen's (b.1970) music traverses genres from French folk music and chanson to minimal, avant-garde and post-rock. The French composer and multi-instrumentalist is primarily known for writing the music for the film Amélie. In 2016 he made the album EUSA, then in 2021, he ventured a step further towards electronic music with his new album Kerber (2021). The latter is a beautifully structured, immersive and thoughtfully constructed electronic world, composed on the island of Ushant where Tiersen now resides. The title of each track on these two albums refers to a specific place on Ushant. Kerber, for example, is named after a chapel in a small village on the island. Some offer the perfect soundtrack for contemplation on a long walk or staring out of a window on a train journey. Others seem predestined to be background music for study or relaxation. With each song, your imagination can easily conjure a scene from a movie: a breakup after a fight in a cosy café or a nature documentary showing two baby birds opening their eyes for the very first time. After a frightening experience with a mountain lion in California, Tiersen came to a realisation. He needed to discover himself more intimately, and to do that, he needed to better know his home, Ushant. In order to understand his home and discover himself, he decided to draw a musical map of the island, of which EUSA is volume one; it contains ten piano works about ten places on Ushant. 'I think there is a similarity between the infinite big and the infinite smallness of everything,' explains Yann Tiersen. 'It's the same experiment looking through a microscope as it is a telescope.' This exploration of the micro and the macro has permeated much of Tiersen's career, and Kerber once again shows the vast expansiveness and intricate detail of his work. This isn't a collection about isolation; it is more an expression of being conscious of your immediate environment, and your place within it. For Tiersen, this approach extracts the same degree of profundity as spending the evening studying the stars - which he himself does. 'You can look at things that are thousands of light years away and relate your own existence to this really cosmic element,' he says. 'But you get that same feeling with the things all around you.' 'A leading exponent of minimalism today' (Fanfare).

Pianist Jeroen van Veen has selected to perform the principle 17 works from these two of Tiersen's albums for his own Island album. 'The result here is a fresh and rather naked version of Eusa and Kerber that I will play in public quite a bit,' Van Veen relates, 'especially for my lie-down concerts, and the music makes a nice addition to my other existing programmes. In these works you can hear the emptiness of the island; although I've never been to Ushant, I can imagine the beauty of nature and the music ebbing and flowing like the ocean's tide, low and high, day in, day out.' French composer Yann Tiersen (born 1970) is one of the most popular and successful film music writers of today. His soulful and melancholic music finds it's traces in folk music, French chansons, musette waltzes, street music, but also in the minimalism of Satie, Glass and Nyman. His international breakthrough came with the music for the French blockbuster "Amélie". Later followed "Goodbey, Lenin!" and others. The composer's two new albums, "Eusa" and "Kerber" are inspired by the small island of Ouessant, where he currently lives. Less than 16 square kilometers in size, it lies off the coast of Brittany in northwestern part of France boasting little apart from meadows and granite rocks. "Eusa" is the Breton name for Ouessant, "Kerber" is a little chapel on the island. Tiersen perfectly expresses the isolation of the island, it's barren and wild landscape, but also it's place in the vast universe when looking into space and it's stars. Dutch pianist, pioneer and champion of Minimalism Jeroen van Veen plays the piano in his inimitable way: focused, serene and hypnotizing. A worthy successor of Van Veen's successful recordings for Brilliant Classics of piano music by Glass, Pärt, Yiruma and many others.

Jeroen van Veen, piano

Jeroen Van Veen
born 1969 started playing the piano at the age of 7. He studied at the Utrecht Conservatory with Alwin Bär and Håkon Austbö. In 1993 he passed the Performing Artists' Exam. Van Veen has played with orchestras conducted by Howard Williams, Peter Eötvös, Neal Stulberg and Robert Craft. He has played recitals in Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia & the USA. Van Veen attended master classes with Claude Helffer, Hans-Peter & Volker Stenzl and Roberto Szidon. He was invited to several festivals; Reder Piano Festival (1988), Festival der Kunsten in Bad Gleichenberg (1992), Wien Modern (1993), Holland Dance Festival (1998) Lek Art Festival (1996-2007). Van Veen recorded for major Dutch Radio- and Television companies like AVRO, NOS, IKON, NCRV, TROS/Internet, WTBC-TV & Radio (Florida, U.S.A.) and Moscow Television. In 1992, Van Veen recorded his first CD with his brother Maarten as the internationally recognized Piano duo Van Veen. In 1995 Piano duo Van Veen made their debut in the United States. They were prizewinners in the prestigious 4th International Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, Florida. After this achievement they toured the United States and Canada many times. The documentary "Two Pianos One Passion" (nominated with an Emmy Award 1996) documents them as a duo.

In 1995 Jeroen Van Veen founded the duo Sandra & Jeroen van Veen, a piano duo with Sandra Mol. As such, they mainly perform (minimal) music for multiple pianos by Erik Satie, Douwe Eisenga, Simeon ten Holt and many more. Beside his career as a solo pianist Van Veen also participates in the following ensembles: ‘Piano Ensemble’, ‘The International Piano Quartet’, ‘Piano Mania’, ‘DJ Piano’ and ‘Jeroen van Veen & Friends’.

The various (>80) compositions by Van Veen may be described as ‘Minimal Music’ with different faces, Crossovers to Jazz, Blues, Soundscape, Avant-Garde, Techno, Trance and Pop Music. Currently Mr. Van Veen is director of Van Veen Productions, Chairman of the Simeon ten Holt Foundation, Culemborg Cultural Foundation, Pianomania Foundation and artistic director of several music festivals in Culemborg, Utrecht and Veldhoven. He is active in Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition based in Miami (USA). Over the last 20 years Van Veen recorded more than 100 CDs for several labels Mirasound, Koch, Naxos, Brilliant Classics, and his own label PIANO. The recording of Les Noces for Koch and Naxos was stated in the New York Times as " the best recording ever". Classics Today on Erik Satie pianoworks four hands, 10 artistic quality, 10 sound quality.

Booklet for Tiersen: Island