Composer Jean-Michel Jarre is known as one of the pioneers of electronic music in Europe.
He managed to popularize the synthesizer and other keyboard instruments starting in the 1970s.
At the same time, the musician himself became a real superstar, famous for his mind-blowing concert performances.
The birth of a star
Jean-Michel is the son of Maurice Jarre, a famous composer in the film industry. The boy was born in 1948 in Lyon, France, and began playing the piano at the age of five.
Even in his youth, the musician moved away from canonical classical music and became interested in jazz. A little later, he will create his own rock band called Mystere IV.
In 1968, Jean-Michel became a student of Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of music competitions. Jarre then joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.
His early experiments in electro-acoustic music produced the 1971 single "La Cage".
A full-length album, Deserted Palace, followed a year later.
The early work of the musician
Jarre's early work was mostly unsuccessful and did not offer any hope for future career prospects as a musician. As Jean-Michel struggled to find his own style, he wrote for a variety of other artists, including Françoise Hardy, and also wrote film scores.
In an effort to push electronic music away from its minimalist foundations as well as from the formal rules of its most accomplished practitioners, Jean-Michel gradually developed his orchestral melodicism.
His first attempt to change the course of electronic music was a 1977 album called Oxygène. The work was commercially successful, becoming a real breakthrough for the musician.
The album reached number two on the UK pop charts.
A follow-up in 1978 called "Equinoxe" was also successful, so a year later, Jarre held his first series of large open-air concerts at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Here, according to average estimates, about a million spectators have visited all the time, which allowed Jarre to get into the Guinness Book of Records.
Continuing a successful career
It wasn't until the release of Les Chants Magnétiques (Magnetic Fields) in 1981 that Jean-Michel made a major tour of China carrying an incredible amount of stage equipment.
Five great performances, held together with 35 national instrumentalists, gave the listeners the LP "Concerts in China".
Further, in 1983, the next full-length album "Music for Supermarkets" followed. It instantly became one of the most expensive albums in history and was a collector's item.
It was written for an art exhibition, and only one copy of it could sell at auction for $10.
Jean-Michel Jarre's next release was Zoolook, released in 1984. Despite its success and marketability, the album failed to become as big a hit as its predecessors.
Break and return
After the release of "Zoolook" followed by a two-year break in creativity. But on April 5, 1986, the musician returned to the stage with an extravagant live performance in Houston, dedicated to the silver anniversary of NASA.
In addition to over a million attendees, the performance was also broadcast by multiple global TV channels.
A few weeks later, the new album of the musician "Rendez-Vous" was released. After several high-profile performances in Lyon and Houston, Jarre decided to combine material from these events on the 1987 live album Cities in Concert: Houston/Lyon.
Revolutions, featuring legendary Shadows guitarist Hank B. Marvin, was released in 1988.
A year later, Jarre released a third live LP called "Jarre Live".
After the release of the 1990s album "En Attendant Cousteau" ("Waiting for Cousteau"), Jarre held the largest live concert, which was attended by more than two and a half million listeners who gathered in Paris specifically to see the performance of the musician in honor of Bastille Day .
Calm and subsequent reissues
However, the next decade was surprisingly quiet for Jarre. With the exception of one live performance, the musician did not appear in the spotlight.
Finally, in 1997, he released the album Oxygène 7-13, updating his concepts for a new musical era.
At the turn of the new millennium, Jean-Michel recorded the album Metamorphoses. Then the musician again took a sabbatical.
A flurry of reissues and remixes followed, including Sessions 2000, Les Granges Brulees and Odyssey Through O2.
In 2007, after a seven-year hiatus from recording, Jarre released a new dance single "Teo and Tea". It was an amazing return to hard electronic music, followed by an equally sharp and angular album under the same name: "Teo and Tea".
The "Essentials & Rarities" collection of records appeared in 2011. Then the musician held a three-hour concert in Monaco dedicated to the marriage of Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock.
Jean-Michel also released the albums Electronica, Vol. 1: The Time Machine" and "Electronica, Vol. 2: The Heart of Noise" in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Many famous musicians took part in the recording, including John Carpenter, Vince Clarke, Cyndi Lauper, Pete Townsend, Armin van Buuren and Hans Zimmer.
In the same 2016, Jarre once again re-released his famous work by recording "Oxygène 3". All three Oxygène albums were also released as the Oxygène Trilogy.
2018 saw the release of Planet Jarre, a collection of old material that also featured two new tracks, Herbalizer and Coachella Opening, the latter of which was featured during Jarre's setlist at the Coachella Festival in California.
In November of the same year, he released his 20th studio album, Equinoxe Infinity, which was the follow-up to the 1978 Equinoxe album.
Awards and achievements
Jean-Michel Jarre has received many awards in his career for his contributions to music. Some of them:
• Midem Award (1978), IFPI's Platinum Europe Award (1998), Eska Music Awards Special Award (2007), MOJO Lifetime Achievement Award (2010).
• He was awarded an officer of the French government in 2011.
• First he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest concert in 1979. He later broke his own record three times.
• Asteroid 4422 Jarre was named after him.
