Tri Yann

Tri Yann emerged from Nantes in 1971 as a Breton ensemble that would rank among France’s most significant folk-rock acts. The project began with Jean Chocun, Jean-Paul Corbineau, and Jean-Louis Jossic, a founding trio whose shared first name supplied the band’s literal translation, “Three Johns.” In those initial years the musicians focused on traditional Breton folk and Celtic repertoire, employing acoustic instruments such as the psaltery, bombarde, dulcimer, and mandoloncello.

The 1976 album La Découverte ou l'Ignorance signaled a turn toward rock instrumentation, bringing in bass, drums, and electric guitar while also revealing progressive tendencies through concept records and elaborate stage costumes. After issuing their first live album and anthology in the mid-1980s, the group released Le Vaisseau de Pierre, an album drawn directly from the comic book of the same title. Throughout the 1990s membership shifted repeatedly, yet Chocun, Corbineau, and Jossic remained the constant core. Their tenth album, 1995’s Portraits, explored figures from Breton history, while the follow-up, 2001’s The Pelegrin, surveyed music from multiple Celtic regions and marked the ensemble’s thirtieth anniversary.

Tri Yann stayed active through the 2000s, delivering the maritime-themed Marines in 2003 and Abyss in 2007 before reaching another landmark with 2011’s Rummadoù (Generations), their fifteenth studio album. A live recording of the 40th-anniversary concerts held that year appeared in spring 2012 and drew on material from across their career. Another conceptual work, La Belle Enchantée, centered on Breton mythological tales, arrived in 2016. Jean-Paul Corbineau died on December 16, 2022, in Nantes while receiving treatment for leukemia; he was 74.