Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel Jarre



Jean-Michel André Jarre (born 24 August 1948 in Lyon, France) is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is highly regarded as one of the pioneers in the Electronic and New Age music genres, as well as the organiser of record-breaking outdoor spectacles of his music, which feature laser displays and fireworks, linking music with the surrounding environment and architecture. Jarre has sold an estimated 80 million albums and singles over his career.

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. 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.



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 some to be the most important and influential electronic music album ever.



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 - note that the French title is a pun which also means Magnetics Songs, or Magnetic Singing) 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. The sounds of the Magnetic Fields album are primarily based in the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, and the album was a huge leap forward in both technical complexity and fidelity.



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 its 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, courtesy of Mark A Fuller.



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.



Oxygene 1976



Equinoxe 1978



Zoolook 1984



Les Chants Magnetiques 1981



The Concerts In China 1982



Rendez Vous 1986



Revolutions 1988



Waiting For Cousteau 1990



Images 1991



Chronologie 1993



Metamorphoses 2000



Aero 2004



Teo & Tea 2007



Oxygene 2007