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Jean-Michel Jarre

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Jean-Michel Jarre

Jean-Michel André Jarre (born August 24, 1948 in Lyon, France) is a French composer, performer and music producer. The music he composes is very difficult to classify. There is arguably no single music genre name that would perfectly describe his musical work. He is highly regarded as one of the pioneers in the Electronic and New Age music genres, as well as an innovator for his record-breaking outdoor spectacles of his music, which feature laser displays and fireworks, linking the music with the surrounding environment and architecture. By 2005, Jarre has sold an estimated 72 million albums and singles over his career. [1]

His original artistic name was Jean-Michel Jarre but c. 1991 he dropped the dash in the name.


Musical career

Musical upbringing

Jarre is the son of Maurice Jarre, a famous composer of film music, and France Pejot, a member of the French resistance during the World War II. When Jean Michel was five, however, his father departed for Hollywood and Jarre would not have much contact with him from then on [2]. But it was also at the same time that Jarre began studying classical piano, which he later abandoned. During his youth, he formed a band called Mystère IV. In the late 1960s, he started experimenting with tape loops, radios and other electronic devices, until, in 1968, he joined the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM), under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer, the "father" of musique concrète, where he was introduced to synthesizers.

The Dreyfus years

Oxygene (1977) was Jarre's breakthrough album.

In the early 1970s, Jarre released his first solo single La Cage (1972), as well as his first two album projects; Deserted Palace (released on Sam Fox Productions/Dreyfus, 1973) and the soundtrack for the film Les Granges Brulées (Dreyfus, 1973). It wasn't until 1976, however, that Jarre secured a recording contract with Polydor (after the initial first release on Disques Motors) with his first major multi-million selling album, Oxygene (although it wasn't until 1977 when the album was released internationally after the initial release in France that Oxygene became world renowned). Oxygene is considered by many to be the most important and influential electronic music album ever, and therefore one of the most important albums in popular music history. Contrasted with his contemporaries, such as the rather clinical, hard, futuristic sound of Kraftwerk, or the more 'cosmic' and murky Tangerine Dream, Oxygene had a lush, spacey and strongly melodic sound reminiscent of the sound of Walter Carlos on the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange released a few years earlier, and was a big commercial success worldwide. The track Oxygene Part IV was released as a single and became one of the best-known pieces of electronic music ever. Key components of Jarre's sound included his use of the Electroharmonix Small Stone phaser on synthetic string pads, and liberal use of echo on various sound effects generated by the VCS3 synthesizer.

In 1978, his second album Equinoxe was released. Jarre developed his sound, employing more dynamic and rhythmic elements, particularly a greater use of sequencing on basslines. Much of this was achieved using custom equipment developed by his collaborator Michel Geiss. A concert on the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1979 followed the release. This concert attracted one million people, which was Jarre's first entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest crowd at an outdoor concert.

In October 1981, Jarre was the first Western pop-artist who was granted permission to give concerts in the People's Republic of China. Also during this year, Les Chants Magnétiques (Magnetic Fields) was released to much acclaim, and was followed by the release of Les Concerts En Chine (The Concerts in China) album in 1982 and is marked as his first live album release, comprising of recordings from his tour of China during 1981.

In 1983, he created the album Musique pour Supermarché (Music for Supermarkets), which had a print run of one single copy. The album was made expressly to voice Jarre's distaste and disregard for the music business. Jarre destroyed all the master records from his studio work, allowed a radio station (Radio Luxembourg) to broadcast the album once and auctioned it, raising £10,000 for French artists. People recorded the album using their tape recorders while it was broadcast on the radio, so they can listen to that album, at a very poor quality though (the radio station was an AM station). Songs from this album were later reworked into future albums.

In 1984, Zoolook was released, relying heavily on the sampler capabilities of the Fairlight CMI (which Jarre had been using, albeit on a smaller role, since Magnetic Fields). The album featured many different words and speech, recorded in different languages around the world, to create different sounds and effects. Laurie Anderson provided the vocals for the track 'Diva'. With it's Rock Music underpinnings, Zoolook resides nicely amongst a mere handful of pop and rock albums (notably Kate Bush's 1982 album "The Dreaming", Yello's 1985 "Stella", 1983's "(Who's Afraid Of) The Art of Noise?" by Art of Noise, 1982's "Naked Eyes" by Naked Eyes, and 1985's "How To Be a Zillionaire" by ABC) that made intensive and sometimes exhaustive use of the Fairlight. It is perhaps too easy to overlook the lengthy list of live (and much-sought) musicians that also made contributions to Zoolook, giving the album a cinematic scope and breadth.

In 1986, NASA and the city of Houston asked him to do a concert to celebrate NASA's 25th anniversary and the city of Houston's 150th anniversary. During that concert, astronaut Ronald McNair was to play the saxophone part of Jarre's piece Rendez-Vous VI while in orbit on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was to have been the first piece of music recorded in space, for the album Rendez-Vous. After the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 which killed McNair, the piece was recorded with a different saxophonist, retitled Ron's piece and the album dedicated to the seven Challenger astronauts. The Houston concert entered the Guinness Book of Records for the audience of over 1.5 million. During the concert, Houston native Kirk Whalum performed Ron McNair's saxophone part on Ron's Piece. The concert featured giant projections of photographic images and laser patterns onto the buildings of downtown Houston, including a gigantic white screen on the front face of the Texaco Heritage Plaza building, which was under construction at the time. Due to vehicles stopping on the freeway passing the concert venue the freeways had to be closed down for the duration of the concert.

Later in 1986, Jarre performed in his home town of Lyon as part of the celebrations for Pope John Paul II's visit to the city. The Pope was in attendance and introduced the concert with a good-night blessing (a recording of which forms part of the album Cities In Concert - Houston/Lyon).

In 1988 the album Revolutions was released. Jarre, along with guests such as Hank Marvin, the legendary guitarist from The Shadows, performed this album and selected highlights from his discography at an event entitled Destination Docklands in front of 200,000 people (not including the thousands of observers who witnessed the event from outside the official concert gates) in two concerts on October 8 and October 9 1988. The event utilized the industrial backdrop of London's Royal Victoria Docks in the East End.

File:Waiting for Cousteau Jarre Album.jpg
Waiting for Cousteau (1990)

On July 14, 1990 Jarre broke his own record in the Guinness Book of Records again with a concert at La Defense, Paris where 2.5 million people watched Jarre light up the Parisian business district. The album En Attendant Cousteau (Waiting for Cousteau) was also released in this year, and was dedicated to the French sea explorer, Jacques Cousteau.

During early 1991, Jarre started promotion for a concert to take place in the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico during the great solar eclipse of July 11, 1991, but problems with several sponsors and local authorities halted the project. [3]

In 1993, Jarre released his first work to be largely influenced by the techno-music scene that had been developing since about 1989. Entitled "Chronologie", the album was, from a technical standpoint, a revision to a concept employed by Jarre in his "Oxygene/Equinoxe" period, where a grandiose overture provides the emotional feel and sonic timbre for the rest of the following, more rhythmic pieces. This time, however, the tracks would feature newer state-of-the-art synthesizers, swooshing sampled clocks (fitting the theme of the album) and contemporary rave-rhythms driving the tempo - a style that became threaded throughout most of the work that followed. In inspiring a generation of electronic musicians with his work from the 1970s and '80s, Jarre in turn found himself drawn to the trance genre which followed him in the '90s. For the first time Jarre toured to support an album, playing large-scale outdoor shows in several European cities and in Hong Kong.

However, to fans reminiscing for the subtle tonal quality and phased sounds of Jarre's early work, 1997 would not be a disappointing year. "Oxygene 7-13" was released to reveal that a coherent sonic story over the course of an album was something that Jarre could still achieve in the sequel-of-sorts to his 1976 landmark release. This album brought back the VCS 3 synthesizer and Mellotron, among others. One can hear inspiration from "Oxygene (Part IV)" and "Equinoxe (Part II)" in the two-movement piece "Oxygene 7", while many of the other techno-based tracks on the album suggest a combination of Jarre's inspiration from both the "Oxygene" and "Chronologie" periods. "Oxygene 10" would also be the first piece composed by Jarre to feature him playing a theremin. Jarre once again toured Europe to support the album, this time focusing on smaller, indoor venues with a stripped down version of his large outdoor extravaganzas. Jarre visited several countries he had never played before.

On September 6 1997, Jarre played in Moscow to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the city. The Moscow State University was used as the backdrop for a spectacular display of image projections, skytrackers and fireworks, with an audience of 3.5 million, Jarre's fourth record for the biggest concert audience ever.

Metamorphoses

In 1999 Jarre created a spectacular music and light show in the Egyptian desert, near Giza. The show, called The 12 Dreams of the Sun, celebrated the new millennium and 5,000 years of civilization in Egypt. It also offered a preview of his new album, Metamorphoses.

Jarre released "Metamorphoses," his first fully-vocal album, in 2000. The compositions and their arrangement on this techno-based album are extremely imaginative. Jarre began integrating sound effects from Apple computers, including an implementation of Macintalk, a Macintosh program that allowed Jarre to have a computer generated voice speak his strange lyrics on the song "Love, Love, Love". Laurie Anderson made her second guest appearance in the Jarre discography on the opening track. The listener was also treated to collaborations with Natacha Atlas on vocals, and Sharon Corr of Irish pop group The Corrs on violin. "Metamorphoses" was not released in the USA until a couple of years later. In 2001 Jarre performed a concert in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke and Tetsuya "TK" Komuro in the Okinawa beaches, to celebrate the "real" beginning of the new millennium. The concert was called Rendez-vous in Space and the group called itself The ViZitors. Later that year, Jarre played at the Acropolis in Greece.

The Aero years

In 2002, Jarre performed a concert called "Aero" at Gammel Vrå Enge wind farm, just outside Aalborg in Denmark, to a rather wet audience of approximately 50,000. A studio-album of mostly retooled Jarre classics was later released in 2004, in combined DVD and CD forms. The DVD featured 5.1 sound, with DTS and Dolby Digital tracks. Jarre affirmed that this was the first ever musical work conceived for 5.1 sound. The video to accompany the musical tracks was a fixed very close-up shot of Anne Parillaud's eyes reacting in real time to the music.

2002 would also mark the release of "Sessions 2000", a set of experimental synth-jazz pieces that were stylistically distinct from anything Jarre had previously released. The work on this album is decidedly less rhythm-oriented than Jarre's previous work from "Equinoxe" on.

AERO (2004)

In 2003, Jarre released the album Geometry of Love for dance club VIP Lounge, in Paris, taking the 'inspired by the club generation' all the way. While Jarre's contemporary albums found themselves drawn to the pulsing rhythms of the dancefloor, Geometry of Love had its spiritual home in the chill-out room at the back, with lush, spawling, sublime works washing over the listener.

On October 10, 2004, Jarre performed two consecutive concerts, first in the Forbidden City, followed immediately by a smaller concert in Tienanmen Square in China, to commemorate open China’s "Year of France" cultural exchange season. Choosing a picturesque location at Wumen Gate in the Forbidden City, Jarre performed with both modern and traditional Chinese orchestras, choir, opera singers, and several guest musicians including Chen Lin, and guitarist Patrick Rondat. Jarre was prevented from performing with China’s Cui Jian whose songs were sung by student demonstrators in 1989. While it is the first section of the performance that is of historical significance (the Forbidden City being very much as its name suggests - the audience comprised of about 15,000 spectators, most of them special guests), the second half had a more muted stage arrangement, providing the closest Jarre had ever had to an 'after-gig' show - with an audience of 9,000 expectant Chinese. This concert was broadcast in HDTV with 5.1 sound by some satellite channels. 5.1 sound was also used on the stage. A combined DVD/CD of these concerts, Jarre In China was released in 2005 with THX-mastered sound.

On August 26, 2005, Jarre performed a long-form concert called "Space of Freedom" in Gdańsk, Poland to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Solidarity. Around 170,000 people attended the paid-entry concert. Lech Wałęsa was present on stage.

On September 10, 2005 Jarre made a short-form concert at the LinX Live Show for the official opening of the Eurocam Media Centre, containing Belgian HDTV Company Euro1080's new HDTV Studios, in Lint, Belgium.

On September, 2006 Tadlow Music released a special symphonic album, titled "The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre" with 20 cover versions of Jarre tracks on 2 CDs. Jarre has supported this album, including his voice in one track. There is also a special limited 3-disc set with a bonus DVD containing 5.1 surround mixes of all the tracks.

In his role of UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Jean-Michel Jarre performed a concert named "Water for Life" in the Sahara Desert, near Merzouga, Morocco on December 16, 2006, to celebrate the year of desertification in the world. [4][5]

The future

Jarre is planning to release a new original studio album in the first quarter of 2007, being his first real studio album since "Metamorphoses".[6]

Jean Michel has now completed this new studio album and is currently scheduled to be released by Warner Music on March 26th 2007. There are two singles planned to be released for this album, with the first expected to be released around the end of January/early February.[7] The first single will be named "Téo et Téa" [8]. A video of what seems to be a teaser of this single has been posted on YouTube, however as of January 19, 2007, this has not been confirmed to be the true single.

During 2006, Jarre produced an experimental TV series directed by Ellibert Mozart Fuzzkhan titled Mort-Mouvance. Its four episodes will be broadcast on French TV channel Arte in March 2007. Shot in the Digital Video format, the series has a pseudo-amateur feel to it, being described as a mix between zombie, musical comedy and veejaying. It will be distributed on the internet for free. [9]

Personal life

Jarre has been married three times:

In 2002 he became publicly engaged to French actress Isabelle Adjani, but later she ended this relationship.[10]

Jarre has three children:

Awards and recognitions

An asteroid, 4422 Jarre, has been named in honor of him.[11]

Selected discography

A complete discography is available at jarre.ch.

Chart Positions

Source for UK and U.S. chart positions: Connoly & Company

Concerts

Major spectacles

During his career, and specially before 1990, Jean-Michel Jarre has given few concerts, compared to other artists. But most of these concerts have been big scale spectacles, often with audiences of millions, and using large buildings or even entire cities as stage. He has toured just three times, the first one in China during 1981, and twice in Europe during the 1990s.

Main article: List of Jean-Michel Jarre concerts

Other performances

Notable instruments

Throughout his concerts, Jarre uses several unusual or custom-built instruments. Some of these are:

Miscellanea

  • The main music theme from the videogame Captain Blood is his track Ethnicolor.
  • The main music theme from the Commodore 64 game "Loco" is a remake of Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinoxe 5.
  • The music to the Commodore 64 game "Bomber Jack" is a remake of Magnetic Fields 2.

References

  1. ^ Press-release by Dreyfus Records
  2. ^ Biography on Romanfrance.com
  3. ^ Template:Sp icon Proceso Mexican magazine - June 1991
  4. ^ News from JarreUK
  5. ^ http://www.unesco.ma/article.php3?id_article=934
  6. ^ News from JarreUK
  7. ^ News from JarreUK
  8. ^ Template:Pl icon Polish Fan Club, based on Warner Music Poland information - January 19, 2007
  9. ^ Template:Fr icon Nettime mailing list - July 2006
  10. ^ Template:Fr icon Teemix - June 24, 2004
  11. ^ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  12. ^ Template:Fr icon List of films by Jacques-Yves Cousteau
  13. ^ Equipment details from Jarrography
  14. ^ Thomas Bloch official website
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