Yann Tiersen's music ranges from French folk music and chanson to minimal, avant-garde and post-rock. The French composer and multi-instrumentalist is best known as the composer of the music for the film Amélie. In 2016, he recorded the album Eusa before taking another step towards electronic music with his new album Kerber (2021). The latter is a beautifully textured, immersive and thoughtful electronic world composed on the island of Ushant, where Tiersen now lives The title of each piece 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 provide the perfect soundtrack for contemplation during a long walk or the view from the window during a train ride. Others seem predestined as background music for studying or relaxing. It's easy to imagine a movie scene for each song: a break-up after an argument in a cosy café or a nature documentary in which two baby birds open their eyes for the first time. After a frightening experience with a mountain lion in California, Tiersen came to a realization. He needed to get to know himself better, and to do that he needed to get to know his home, Ushant, better. In order to understand his homeland and discover himself, he decided to draw a musical map of the island, the first volume of which, Eusa, contains ten piano works about ten places on Ushant. "I think there is a similarity between the infinitely large and the infinitely small," explains Yann Tiersen. "It's the same experiment of looking through a microscope as through a telescope." This exploration of the micro and macro realms is a recurring theme throughout Tiersen's career, and Kerber once again demonstrates the enormous breadth and intricate detail of his work. This collection is not about isolation, but rather about being aware of one's immediate surroundings and one's place within them. For Tiersen, this approach has the same depth as studying the stars in the evening - which he does himself. "You can look at things that are thousands of light years away and relate your own existence to this truly cosmic element," he says. "But you get the same feeling about the things that surround you." "A leading exponent of contemporary minimalism." (Fanfare). Pianist Jeroen van Veen has selected the most important 17 works from these two albums by Tiersen for his own Island album. "The result is a fresh and rather naked version of Eusa and Kerber, which I will often play in public, especially at my recitals," says Van Veen, "and the music is a nice addition to my other programs. 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, which, like the tides of the ocean, ebb and flow, pass day in and day out." The Dutch pianist, pioneer and advocate of minimalism Jeroen van Veen plays the piano in his own inimitable way: concentrated, serene and mesmerizing. A worthy successor to Van Veen's successful recordings for Brilliant Classics with piano music by Glass, Pärt, Yiruma and many others.