Top 10 Facts about Jean-Michel Jarre

Jean-Michel Jarre at Coachella. Photo by Raph_PH. Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Facts about Jean-Michel Jarre

Jean-Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer, and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and is well-known for organizing outdoor concerts featuring his music, complete with massive laser displays, large projections, and fireworks.

Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents and received piano training. He was exposed to a variety of art forms at a young age, including street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. But it is possible that Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, had the greatest influence on his musical style.

Oxygène, his first mainstream success, was released in 1976. The album, which was recorded in a makeshift studio at his house, sold an estimated 18 million copies. Oxygène was followed by Équinoxe in 1978, and Jarre performed in front of a record-breaking audience of over a million people at the Place de la Concorde in 1979, a record he has since broken three times.

More albums would follow, but his 1979 concert served as a model for his future worldwide performances. Several of his albums were released in time for large-scale outdoor events.

1. Jarre had difficulty with classical piano lessons

Jean-Michel Jarre at Coachella. Photo by Raph_PH. Wikimedia Commons

Jarre struggled with classical piano lessons, but he eventually switched teachers and worked on his scales. His discovery of a Boris Vian trumpet violin at the Saint-Ouen flea market, where his mother sold antiques, sparked a broader interest in musical instruments.

He frequently accompanied his mother to Le Chat Qui Pêche (The Fishing Cat), a Paris jazz club run by one of her resistance friends, where saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, as well as trumpeters Don Cherry and Chet Baker, were regulars. These early jazz experiences led him to believe that music could be “descriptive, without lyrics.”

2. Pierre Schaeffer influenced Jarre’s decision to become an artist

Jean-Michel Jarre, Musician, during a press conference. Photo by Web Summit. Wikimedia Commons

Other artists always have an impact on people. Pierre Schaeffer is an artist who has the likes of Jarre. This well-known musician was a pioneer in musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

He was also influenced by French artist Pierre Soulages, whose exhibition he saw at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Jarre realized that “for the first time in music, you could act as a painter with frequencies and sounds” after seeing Soulages’ paintings, which used multiple textured layers. 

He was also influenced by classical and modernist music; in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, he described how a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had an impact on him.

3. He began with a makeshift recording studio in the kitchen of his apartment

Jarre set up a small makeshift recording studio in the kitchen of his apartment on Rue de la Trémoille. It contained his first synthesiser, an EMS VCS 3,and an EMS Synthi AKS, both of which were connected to Revox tape machines.

Jarre composed the five-minute song “Happiness Is a Sad Song” for a 1969 exhibition at the Maison de la Culture (Cultural House) in Reims. La Cage/Erosmachine, a mix of harmony, tape effects, and synthesisers recorded in 1969 and released in 1971, was another of his early compositions. 

4. He released his first solo album in 1972

Jean Michel Jarre. Photo by A.Savin. Wikimedia Commons

He released his first solo album, Deserted Palace, in 1972 and composed the soundtrack for Les Granges Brûlées.

5. Jarre recorded the album Oxygène at his home studio 

Jarre’s low-budget solo album Oxygène, recorded at his home studio in 1976, catapulted him to international prominence.  The music was created using analog synthesizers such as the EMS VCS 3 and the EMS Synthi AKS, and recorded on a Scully 8-track recorder with an Ampex 256 and 3M tape mix. 

Jarre was initially rejected by several record labels until another of Schaeffer’s students, Hélène Dreyfus, persuaded her husband to release the album on his label, Disques Motors. The first pressing of 50,000 copies was promoted through hi-fi shops, clubs, and discos and had sold 70,000 copies in France by April 1977. 

6. Jarre was a jingle composer 

He wrote music for ballet, theater, television shows, department stores, and advertising jingles for Pepsi-Cola, Nestle, and RTL.

The music for airports and libraries in North America was created using the VCS 3 and a Farfisa professional organ. Between 1972 and 1975,Jean-Michel composed and wrote lyrics for artists such as Patrick Juvet, Christophe, Françoise Hardy, and Gérard Lenorman. In 1972, he worked on the Olympia show and composed music for the International Festival of Magic. 

7. He performed in front of a million people at the Place de la Concorde

Although sales of Jarre’s follow-up album, Équinoxe, were still healthy, it had less of an impact than Oxygène, but the following year Jarre held a large open-air concert at the Place de la Concorde on Bastille Day.

With over 1 million attendees, the free outdoor event set a world record for the largest number of spectators ever at an open-air concert. Although it was not Jarre’s first concert, the 40-minute event, which featured light, image, and fireworks projections, served as a model for Jarre’s future concerts.

8. Jarre was the first Western performer in China

The British Embassy gave Radio Beijing copies of his Oxygène and Équinoxe the same year, and they became the first pieces of foreign music to be played on Chinese national radio in decades. 

Jarre was invited by the Republic to become the first Western musician to perform in post-Mao Zedong China. The performances were scheduled to take place from October 18 to November 5, 1981. However, only five concerts were held, two in Beijing and three in Shanghai.

The first, in Beijing, was initially attended mostly by officials, but before the concert began, technicians discovered that there was insufficient power to power the stage and auditorium. Chinese officials resolved the issue by temporarily disconnecting power to the surrounding districts.

9. The skyline of Texas impressed Jarre

Texas skyline. Photo by Tony Webster. Wikimedia Commons

Jarre was invited by the Houston Grand Opera’s musical director in 1985 to perform a concert commemorating Texas’ 150th anniversary on April 5, 1986. Although he was preoccupied with other projects and was initially unimpressed by the proposal, on a subsequent visit to the city, he was struck by the visual grandeur of the city’s skyline and agreed to perform.

In addition, 1985 marked the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and NASA asked Jarre to incorporate the anniversary into the concert.

10. He gave a virtual performance in 2020

Jean Michel Jarre. Photo by Milan Csaplár. Wikimedia Commons

Jarre  performed a virtual New Year’s Eve concert online on December 31, 2020.  He performed from a studio in Paris, but it appeared to be from Notre Dame. As of January 5, 2021, the show had over 75 million viewers. The performance was in support of his new album “Welcome to the Other Side,” which includes 12 songs from his previous releases.  In September 2021, the concert recording was released on CD, LP, and Blu-ray.