Jean-Michel Jarre

Biography

Early life, influences, and education

Jean-Michel Jarre was born in Lyon on 24 August 1948, to Francette Pejot, a French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor, and composer Maurice Jarre. His grandmother was Jewish. When Jarre was five, his parents separated, and his father moved to the United States, leaving him with his mother. He did not see his father again until reaching the age of 18.

For the first eight years of his life, Jarre spent six months each year at his maternal grandparents' flat on the Cours de Verdun, in the Perrache district of Lyon. Jarre's grandfather was an oboe player, engineer and inventor, designing an early audio mixer used at Radio Lyon. He also gave Jean-Michel his first tape recorder. From his vantage point high above the pavement, the young Jarre was able to observe street performers at work, an experience he later cited as proving influential on his art.

Jarre struggled with classical piano studies, although he later changed teachers and worked on his scales. A more general interest in musical instruments was sparked by his discovery at the Saint-Ouen flea market, where his mother sold antiques, of a Boris Vian trumpet violin. He often accompanied his mother to Le Chat Qui Pêche (The Fishing Cat), a Paris jazz club run by one of her friends from her resistance years, where saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, and trumpet players Don Cherry and Chet Baker were regular performers. These early jazz experiences suggested to him that music may be "descriptive, without lyrics".

He was also influenced by the work of French artist Pierre Soulages, whose exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris he attended. Soulages' paintings used multiple textured layers, and Jarre realised that "for the first time in music, you could act as a painter with frequencies and sounds". He was also influenced by classical, modernist music. In a 2004 interview for The Guardian, he spoke of the effect that a performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring had upon him:

This is where Stravinsky created it in 1913, and it was a huge shock. I also saw the last concert by the great Arabic singer Om Khalsoum. She is the goddess, the Maria Callas of the Orient. Then I heard "Georgia on My Mind" by Ray Charles, and I realised that music can talk to your tummy. I was so impressed by the organic sensuality coming from Ray Charles's music – there was no intellectual process and it was great.

1970s

In 1971 Jarre was commissioned by choreographer Norbert Schmucki to perform a ballet called AOR ("the light" in Hebrew), at the Palais Garnier. He also composed background music for ballet, theatre, television programs, department stores, and advertising jingles for Pepsi-Cola, Nestlé and RTL. The music for airports, and North America libraries was composed with the VCS 3 and a Farfisa professional organ. From 1972 to 1975, Jean-Michel wrote music and lyrics for artists like Françoise Hardy, Gérard Lenorman, Christophe and Patrick Juvet. In 1972 he collaborated in an Olympia show and wrote music for the International Festival of Magic. In 1972 he also released his first solo album, Deserted Palace, and composed the soundtrack for Les Granges Brûlées (The Burned Barns).

Jarre's 1976 low-budget solo album Oxygène, recorded at his home studio, made him famous internationally. The music was made with analog synthesizers like the EMS VCS 3 and the EMS Synthi AKS, and recorded with a Scully 8-track recorder. Jarre initially was turned down by several record companies, until he decided to meet with Francis Dreyfus, the head of the Disques Motors label, to see whether he could release the album, to which he accepted. The first pressing of 50,000 copies was promoted through hi-fi shops, clubs and discos, and by April 1977 had sold 70,000 copies in France. When interviewed in Billboard magazine, Motors's director Stanislas Witold said: "In a sense we're putting most of our bets on Jean-Michel Jarre. He is quite exceptional and we're sure that by 1980 he will be recognised worldwide."

Jarre's follow-up album, Equinoxe, was released in 1978. Though its sales were still healthy, it had less of an impact than Oxygène. But in 1979 Jarre held a large open-air concert on Bastille Day, at the Place de la Concorde. The free outdoor event set a world record for the largest number of spectators ever at an open-air concert, drawing more than 1 million spectators. Although it was not the first time he had performed in concert (Jarre had already played at the Paris Opera Ballet), the 40-minute event, which used projections of light, images and fireworks, served as a blueprint for Jarre's future concerts. Its popularity helped create a surge in sales—a further 800,000 records were sold between 14 July and 31 August 1979—and the Frenchman Francis Rimbert featured at the event.

1980s

By the time Les Chants Magnétiques was released on 20 May 1981, Oxygène and Equinoxe had achieved global sales of about 6 million units. In its first two months the new album sold 200,000 units in France alone. The album uses sounds from the Fairlight CMI, a new instrument of which Jarre was a pioneer. Its digital technology allowed him to continue his earlier sonic experimentation in new ways.

In that same year, the British Embassy gave Radio Beijing copies of Oxygène, Equinoxe, and Les Chants Magnétiques, which became the first pieces of foreign music to be played on Chinese national radio in decades. The Republic invited Jarre to become the first western musician to play in post-Mao Zedong China. The performances were scheduled to run from 18 October to 5 November 1981. 5 concerts were performed, two in Beijing and three in Shanghai. The first, in Beijing, was initially attended mostly by officials, but before the concert began, technicians realised that not enough power was available to supply the stage and auditorium. Chinese officials solved the problem by temporarily cutting power to the surrounding districts.

The stadium was almost full when the concert began, but as Beijing's buses stopped running at about 10 o'clock, about half the audience left before it finished. To boost the audience attendance for the second night, Jarre and his production team purchased some of the concert tickets and gave them to children on the streets. Jarre originally wanted the concerts to be free, but the Chinese authorities decided to charge between £0.20 and £0.50 per ticket. In 1982, recordings of the concerts, which featured one of Jarre's signature electronic instruments, the laser harp, were released as a double-disc LP.

Between February and May 1983, Jarre recorded a single LP copy of an album entitled Musique pour Supermarché (English: Music for Supermarkets) whose objective was to be the soundtrack of a show called Orrimbe, to later be auctioned with the master tapes and plates destroyed. The album was later broadcast exclusively on Radio Luxembourg with Jarre encouraging listeners to record the broadcast.

In 1984, he released seventh studio album Zoolook. In this album he expanded the sample-based approach which had been initiated on Les Chants Magnétiques and continued on Music for Supermarkets. The album was based around multiple fragments of human voices pronouncing words and speeches in different languages from all over the world, recorded digitally by Jarre and then played back and edited on the Fairlight CMI.

1990s

In 1990, Jarre released En Attendant Cousteau (Waiting for Cousteau), a tribute to the French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. On Bastille Day he performed a concert at La Défense in Paris, attended by a record-breaking audience of about two million people, again beating his earlier world record. He later promoted a concert near the Pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico, to be held during the solar eclipse of 11 July 1991. However, with only weeks to go, important equipment had not arrived and the sinking in the Atlantic Ocean of a cargo ship containing the purpose-built pyramidal stage and other technical and financial problems made staging the concert impossible. Jarre's disappointment was such that he "could not cope with Mexican food for two years".

About two years later he released Chronologie, an album that features Jarre's traditional collection of instruments like the ARP 2600 and Minimoog, as well as newer synthesisers such as the Roland JD-800 and the Kurzweil K2000.

In the state of mind I did Chronologie, it's quite close to what I did for Oxygène, using a lot of the old synthesizers of the '70s, like the Moog synthesizer — which I consider to be the Stradivarius of electronic music — mixed with the digital sound and the beat of the dance scene of the '90s. In a sense, Chronologie is a kind of mixture between the sounds of the '70s and the sounds of the '90s.

Jarre was invited to the inaugural celebrations of the Palace of the Lost City, a hotel located within the Sun City in South Africa. Three concerts were held on 1, 2 and 3 December 1992, in which more than 45,000 people attended.

Chronologie was performed at a series of 16 performances across Europe called Europe in Concert. These were on a smaller scale than his previous concerts, featuring a miniature skyline, laser imaging and fireworks. Locations included Lausanne, Mont St Michel, London, Manchester, Barcelona, Seville and the Versailles Palace near Paris. In March 1994, a concert was held in Hong Kong, to mark the opening of the city's new stadium.

Jarre performed many of his most well-known hits at the Concert for Tolerance on Bastille Day in 1995, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. The Eiffel Tower was specially lit for the occasion, prompting the installation of a more permanent display. The following December, he created the website "A Space for Tolerance", which featured music from En Attendant Cousteau, played while the user browsed a variety of "visual worlds".

2000s

In 2001, he released Interior Music, an album of 1,000 copies created for use by the Danish audio-visual company Bang & Olufsen stores. The album consists of two long-form pieces: "Bonjour Hello", is a 25-minute audio collage of sounds with voices saying short sentences in French, English and Danish. The second piece, "Whispers of Life", is an instrumental version of the first, with the voices removed.

In 2001 he composed, with Francis Rimbert arrangements, the music for the short-lived French channel Match TV. On 7 September 2002, Jarre held a very wet and muddy concert at the Gammel Vrå Enge near the city of Aalborg in Denmark, with 40,000 spectators (including 5,000 VIPs). Danish band Safri Duo featured on the track "Aero", which in fact was Bourges 2 from the performance earlier that year, and Rendez-Vous 4. The concert was broadcast live on various TV stations around the world and a shortened one-hour version was made available for rebroadcast.

By no fault of Jarre, due to 22 millimeters of rain and lack of proper preparation for and execution of the event, it took several hours for all people to be able to leave the area, and many cars were stuck until the next day. The problems became a big issue in Danish media, since, had there been an accident, it would be extremely difficult for help to get to the location. Two years previously, nine people were killed at Roskilde Festival, which had brought focus on security at large concerts. Preparations for AERO were later proven to have been lacking, and the police investigation concluded, in part, that permission for the concert should not have been granted. Reactions from spectators were mixed, some claiming it was unsafe, and others saying it was a case of overreacting..

The show also marked a change in direction in Jarre's live concerts; from Rendez-vous Houston onwards he had been accompanied by a full complement of live musicians, but at Aalborg he was accompanied only by Francis Rimbert, and having guests like the Klarup Girls Choir, Safri Duo and the Aalborg Symphonic Orchestra.

In 2003 he released Geometry of Love on Warner Music label, it was commissioned by Jean-Roch as soundtrack for his 'V.I.P. Room' nightclub in France. The physical CD was a long time out of print, but in 2018 remastered reissue was released on CD again. The album cover is a pixelated and turned counter-clockwise photo of Jarre's girlfriend at the time, Isabelle Adjani.

2010s

On 1 March 2010, Jean-Michel Jarre started the second leg of his 2009–2010 Indoors tour; on 10 June, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by Mojo magazine. On 1 July 2011, Jarre performed a large-scale concert in Monaco to celebrate the marriage of Prince Albert and his bride Charlene. A later concert was held at Carthage during the city's 12 August 2013 musical festival.

In June 2013, Jarre was elected as president of the Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d´Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC). In Spring 2015, Jarre released the first music from a new studio album, released in October 2015, following around four years of work. The album, Electronica 1: The Time Machine (working title: E-Project), comprises a number of collaborations with other artists. The first of these to be released was the collaboration with Gesaffelstein entitled Conquistador, followed by Glory, with M83. The track was also featured as part of the soundtrack of a short film entitled EMIC.

Other collaborations on the album include Tangerine Dream for Zero Gravity; Armin van Buuren for "Stardust", John Carpenter for "A Question of Blood", Little Boots for If..! and Pete Townshend for Travelator, Pt. 2. The album became Jarre's first album in over 25 years to make the UK Top 10 at No. 8. In December 2016, the album was nominated for the Grammys 2017 Awards in the "Best Dance/Electronic Album" category. In June 2015, in collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre, the transmedia project Soundhunters was released on the platform of the Franco-German channel ARTE. The transmedia conceptualized by the Blies brothers (Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies), François Le Gall and Marion Guth of the Luxembourg production company a_BAHN, is openly inspired by the album Zoolook to which it pays tribute.

On 5 October 2016, Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 announced that Jarre would be a member of its advisory panel. The transmedia is composed of a web documentary using Zoolook's creative process involving 4 international artists (Simonne Jones, Mikael Seifu, Daedelus and Luke Vibert); a 52' documentary film directed by Beryl Koltz broadcast in September 2015 on ARTE (with the participation of Chassol, Matthew Herbert, Blixa Bargeld, Jean-Michel Jarre, Matmos, Kiz, Joseph Bertolozzi); and finally a participatory tribute music album whose tracks were chosen by Jean-Michel Jarre, entitled Zoolook Revisited. Soundhunters won the Fipa d'Or 2015 in Biarritz. Soundhunters was also presented in conference at SXSW and Convergence NYFF 2016.

Since 2020

On 31 December 2020, Jarre held a virtual New Year's Eve concert online. He performed from a studio in Paris, but it appeared virtually from a Notre Dame setting. The show has had over 75 million viewers as of 5 January 2021. The show was done in support of his new album Welcome to the other side, which features 12 tracks from his previously released music. The recording of the concert was released on CD, LP and Blu-ray in September 2021. VR Concert created by VRROOM received 2 Webby Award Honoree, Crystal Owl Award for the Best Live Entertainment, and Social Music Award.

On 21 June 2021, Jarre was awarded Commander to the Legion of Honour by French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée presidential palace in Paris. After the ceremony he performed at the same venue as part of the Fête de la Musique. In March 2022 Jarre presented a live project, Oxymore, at Radio France's Hyper Weekend Festival located at Paris.

His twenty-second studio album Oxymore was released on 21 October 2022 by Sony Music and Menart Records as a tribute to Pierre Henry. Some songs were accompanied by a remix created by different artists such as Brian Eno, Nina Kraviz, Armin van Buuren, the first single from the album, "Brutalism", was released along with a remix made by Depeche Mode member Martin Gore.

OXYMORE was created as multiformat concert in VR by VRROOM Team and received Webby People's Voice Award in 2023 and Webby Nomination and Honoree in 2022, Crystal Owl Award for Best Production Design, Raindance Immersive Honourable Jury Mentioning, as well as nomination for the Producers Guild of America's Innovation Award. In July 2022, his music publishing catalog was acquired by BMG Rights Management.

On 25 December 2023, Jarre held a concert in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles to celebrate the 400 years of the palace. This was released in October 2024 as a limited edition "phydigital" (hybrid physical and digital release) in either vinyl or CD (with a limited edition of 2000 for each format, the vinyl being numbered on the sleeve), which as well as the physical medium which provided the owner with "a truly unique digital experience," accessible by phone through a custom NFC sticker embedded inside the CD or vinyl sleeve. The digital content featured a special greeting from Jarre's avatar, exclusive behind-the-scenes photos of the event's visuals created by Jarre and his team, custom AI animations of the Hall of Mirrors, and an in-depth interview with Jarre discussing the event and its unique setup. It also included a lossless audio streaming version with an electro rendition of JB Lully's "Walk to the Turcs Ceremony," the recent single "Epica Oxygene," and fresh versions of existing tracks. In the greeting from Jarre's avatar, Jarre said that they would be updating the content twice.

Flying AirCar mission

In April 2024, Jean-Michel Jarre became the world's first passenger to take off in Klein Vision's flying AirCar.

Personal life

Jarre was married to Flore Guillard from 1975 until 1977.

He met his second wife, actress Charlotte Rampling, at a dinner party in Saint-Tropez in 1976. The two married. Jarre and Rampling separated in 1996 and divorced in 2002. Jarre gained custody of his daughter Émilie Charlotte. Rampling gained custody of her son Barnaby. Together Jarre and Rampling had a son, David.

He had a brief relationship with Isabelle Adjani, and married French actress Anne Parillaud in May 2005. In November 2010 the couple announced their divorce.

Jarre started dating Chinese actress Gong Li in 2016. They married in 2019, and have kept the relationship private.

Jarre has a half-sister, Stéphanie Jarre, from one of Maurice Jarre's other marriages. His stepbrother, Kevin Jarre, died in 2011. Although Maurice and Jean-Michel remained estranged, following Maurice's death in 2009, Jarre paid tribute to his legacy.

Jarre said about his father: "My father and I never really achieved a real relationship. We probably saw each other 20 or 25 times in our lifetime. When you are able, at my age, to count the times you have seen your father, it says something. (...) I think it's better to have conflict, or, if you have a parent who dies, you grieve, but the feeling of absence is very difficult to fill, and it took me a while to absorb that".

Discography

Studio albums

Nominations

2016: Berlin Music Video Awards, Best Editor for 'GLORY'