I love being able to say I have a favorite musical minimalist--it sounds so sophisticated. Although it doesn't really seem fair to categorize Yann Tiersen as a minimalist, given that his music feels so gorgeously full and nuanced; I tend to associate minimalism with the ultimate of the genre, Philip Glass, who, despite being a U of C alum (have to mention these things when possible), hasn't grabbed me musically. I suppose that's because my one brush with his work was through Koyaanisqatsi, which, while a fascinating movie, hardly provided the kind of music I'd want to listen to outside of the context of collapsing buildings and mass produced plastic items. Of course, just now I'm discovering some of his piano work through Youtube and finding it to be rather beautiful...
Anyway, back to Yann Tiersen. I discovered Yann like most people: through the Amelie soundtrack, which I bought several years ago to accompany my copy of the movie. I don't often buy soundtracks (or CDs in general) but the Amelie soundtrack is so soaring and emotional that I felt I would need to have it available. Eventually I stopped thinking of it as just the Amelie soundtrack, and started thinking of it as Yann Tiersen's music, which led me to the rest of his corpus. This was sometime during first year, and at some point there was a click and I realized that writing papers to the music of Yann Tiersen was both an uplifting and inspiring experience. It was wordless (with the exception of a few songs) but not boring--it wasn't so much that it blended into the background as that it worked somehow in concert with my thoughts. I wrote probably half of the essays I wrote first year to a set of his albums.
This is an improvised version of my favorite of his--Rue des Cascades. I have mentioned it before, two years ago, but I'm so routinely blown away by it.
Perhaps I should begin to explore minimalism more in depth...
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