Jean-Michel Jarre

Electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre was raised in Lyon; his father was composer Maurice Jarre and his mother was a French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor. As a teenager he absorbed numerous forms of music, studying classical piano but also accompanied his mother to jazz concerts. He even played guitar in a rock band, though his interest ultimately shifted to Stravinsky, Stockhausen and other modern composers. After acquiring some early synthesizers he began writing soundtracks for movies and television; his first solo album Deserted Palace was drawn from his library music. However his first significant work was the 1976 album Oxygene. Both this and its followup Equinoxe were richly melodic, album-length electronic pieces that found an audience in the progressive-rock world, but are also credited with helping to create the New Age genre. Both albums made Jarre a superstar in Europe; in 1979 he made the Guinness Book of World Records by playing to one million at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. That year he scored his first mainstream film, Peter Weir's "Gallipoli" (1979). The next album, 1981's Les Chants Magnétiques marked his first work with the Fairlight computer keyboard, and was promoted with concerts in Beijing and Shanghai-the first ever by a Western artist in post-Mao Red China. He brought his live spectacle to America in 1986, playing an outdoor Houston show under NASA's auspices. This time the crowd was 1.3 million, another Guinness record. He returned to Lyon in fine style later that year, playing to accompany Pope John Paul II's visit to that city. He brought another spectacle to London in 1988, playing the piece Revolutions in a floating concert at the Royal Victoria Dock in London. The band performed on four barges, UK rock legend Hank Marvin guested, and Princess Diana was present. The '90s brought more milestones including his largest concert to that date, playing for 2.5 million in Paris in 1990. This too was surpassed when he was invited to Moscow in 1995 and played to 3.5 million, in a show that included a live video hookup from space. He celebrated the new millennium by playing from sunset to sunrise at the foot of the Great Pyramids near Cairo. He began 2000 with Metamorphoses, his first album to feature vocals, the 12 singers included Laurie Anderson, Irish artist Sharon Corr and himself. Another conceptual show to celebrate the wind was staged on a wind farm near Aalborg , Denmark in 2002, though it was nearly ended by a sudden rainstorm. As his music began to include elements of modern electronica, he also looked back to release a complete re-recording of Oxygene in 2007. Yet another concert event was staged in Monaco in 2011, to celebrate the marriage of Prince Albert to Charlene. 2-15-16 brought a matched pair of albums, Electronica 1: The Time Machine and Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise with a wide range of collaborators including Pete Townshend, Gary Numan, and a speech by Edward Snowden. In the summer of 2017, Jarre did a full American tour for the first time.