Live Review: Yann Tiersen

French musician Yann Tiersen may not consider himself a composer of soundtracks, but every single one of his compositions is so heavily imbued with drama and a narrative quality that it's impossible not to experience an internal film festival as we sit through his concert. Dropping into Melbourne following his feature at Sydney Festival, he performs a one-off concert to promote his latest 'album' EUSA — a collection of sheet music for the piano with each piece relating to "a specific location on the island of Ushant off the coast of Brittany". 

EUSA is an almost autobiographical project in the making, as Tiersen's intention for the project is to chart ten locations around Ushant and illustrate them as "an extension, a map of who I am". He also created a series of field recordings and photographs at each of these locations to anchor the works in their setting.

On stage, Tiersen is diminutive, casually attired and laconic. He flips on a large sound recorder and the lush sounds of wind rushes, wild-animal and bird calls, words spoken in French and waves crashing against the shore slowly wash over the auditorium. Against this atmospheric backdrop, Tiersen layers his trademark piano compositions — delicate, twinkling, stirring, richly evocative — and takes us on an aural tour of his native Breton coast and beyond.

With just a single naked bulb suspended over his piano keys and faint blue lighting wash, we are drawn into a revered intimacy with Tiersen. Known to compose entirely in isolation, Tiersen's compositions are a window through which he lets us share in his unguarded emotions — swirling in ebbs and flows, and pregnant with untold ruminations. Porz Goret, for example, is mesmerisingly exquisite in its delicacy and simmering emotions, transporting us effortlessly to their namesake shores.

Refreshingly, he also takes a few turns at the violin and on a toy piano, highlighting subtexts and nuances he could not express through the ivories alone. Even the humble violin morphs into a human organ in his deft hands, crying soulful harmonies and building tension to new heights. Tiersen urgently saws his violin to such dizzying, deafening climaxes that plumes of smoke literally billow above him, the snapped strings of his spent bow flailing helplessly in the air. Kneeling at the toy piano, he conjures rustic chimes and dull metallic reverberations that recall the bell towers of a medieval village. At other times, the tinkering is bright and cheerful, enclosing us within the velvet-lined interior of a child's music box.

After just under 90 minutes in his presence, we are spellbound as Tiersen seamlessly melds his own deepest contemplations to our individual reveries and makes each of us the star of our own movie.