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Jean-Michel Jarre

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jean-Michel Jarre is a French composer and electronic musician, born in 1948 in Lyon, the son of the film composer Maurice Jarre. In 1969 he went to work at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, the studio of Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrète. There he learned to work with sound as a material. With Oxygène (1976) he brought synthesizer music to an audience of millions.

Music and breakthrough

Jarre recorded Oxygène between August and November 1976 in an improvised home studio in the kitchen of his Paris apartment. He used a handful of analogue instruments, including an ARP 2600, an EMS VCS 3, an Eminent organ, a Mellotron and a Korg Mini-Pops rhythm box. The album consists of six parts that flow into one another: floating blocks of chords, filtered noise that sounds like wind, and above it simple melodies. Oxygène was released in December 1976 on Disques Motors, reached number 1 in France and number 2 in England, where Oxygène (Part IV) reached number 4 as a single. The album is estimated to have sold some 18 million copies. Its successor Équinoxe followed in 1978.

Influence

Jarre then became known for his open-air concerts. On 14 July 1979 more than a million people came to the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and in 1986 even more came in Houston. In 1981 he gave five concerts in Beijing and Shanghai, as the first Western musician invited to China after Mao. Jarre showed that one person with a few synthesizers could make an entire album. In doing so he stands between the studio experiments of Schaeffer and the ambient and new age of the 1980s.

Listening

Listening tip. In Oxygène, Pt. 4, listen to the rhythm section: it comes from a cheap Korg rhythm box with preset patterns. Above it Jarre plays a simple synthesizer melody, and in between, bursts of noise sweep like gusts of wind through the stereo image.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Mentioned in other articles

See also

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (en): Jean-Michel Jarre
  2. Wikipedia (en): Oxygène
Categories: ArtistsSynthesizer orchestra, ambient and new age