Revolutions
In 1988 Jarre released his ninth studio album, Revolutions. The album spans several genres, including symphonic industrial, Arabian inspired, light guitar pop and ethnic electro jazz. A two hour concert, titled Destination Docklands, was planned for 24 September 1988 at the Royal Victoria Docks in east London. The location, close to the heart of London, was chosen in part for its desolate environment, but also because Jarre thought the architecture and environment would be ideally suited to his music. Plans to stage the concert began early in 1988, with Jarre meeting local officials and members of the community. The floating stage on which Jarre and his musicians would perform was built on top of four large barges. Large purpose-built display screens were constructed from scaffolding, and one of the buildings to be used in the backdrop was painted white. Local children practised the choral elements of the performance. During the transportation of several large mirror balls commissioned for the event, one came loose and fell onto the roadside. On the same night a satellite (containing radioactive material) was due to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. The sighting of the mirror ball led to a degree of confusion as some people mistook it for the falling satellite. World War II searchlights were to illuminate the sky and surrounding architecture, along with thousands of coloured fireworks.
Newham Borough Council, which ran the docks, expressed their fears about the safety of the event, and delayed their decision on whether to allow the concert to proceed until 12 September before eventually refusing the licence application. The local fire service were also concerned that in the event of a fire, they would be unable to gain access. Work continued on the site, and Jarre's team looked at other locations around the UK, but following improvements to both on and off-site safety Jarre eventually won conditional approval on 28 September to stage two separate performances from 8–9 October.
Along with thousands in the surrounding streets and parks, 200,000 people watched Jarre perform with guests such as guitarist Hank Marvin. The performances were not without issues; inclement weather had threatened to break the stage from its moorings, and although the original plan was to have Jarre float across the Royal Victoria Dock on the first evening, winds of over 30 knots meant that it was deemed unsafe — the winds were so strong that television cameras were blown over. The audience, which included Diana, Princess of Wales, was on the second evening soaked by rain and wind.
1990–1999
En Attendant Cousteau / Waiting for Cousteau
In 1990, inspired by the French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Jarre released En Attendant Cousteau. On Bastille Day 1990 Jarre performed a concert at La Défense in Paris, attended by a record-breaking estimated audience of about two million people — beating again his earlier world records. He later promoted a concert near the Pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico, to be held during the solar eclipse of 11 July 1991. The project stalled; several weeks before the day of the concert important equipment had not yet arrived, but the sinking of a cargo ship in the Atlantic ocean containing the purpose-built pyramidal stage and other technical equipment made the staging of the concert impossible. Jarre's disappointment was such that he "...could not cope with Mexican food for two years".
Chronologie
In 1993 Jarre released his first work to be largely influenced by the techno-music scene that had been developing since about 1989. Entitled Chronologie, the album was, from a technical standpoint, a revision to a concept employed by Jarre in his Oxygène/Équinoxe period, where a grandiose overture provides the emotional feel and sonic timbre for the rest of the following, more rhythmic pieces.
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. [sic]
—Jean Michel Jarre,
Along with Jarre's traditional collection of instruments, such as the ARP 2600 and Mini Moog, Jarre used newer state-of-the-art equipment such as the Roland JD-800 and the Kurzweil K2000. This album features sampled clocks and contemporary rhythms, driving the tempo. Its release was followed by Jarre's first large scale tour. A series of 16 performances across Europe, Europe In Concert occurred on a smaller scale than his previous concerts. Chronologie was central to the tour's repertoire. The set featured a miniature skyline, laser imaging, and fireworks. Locations included Lausanne, Mont St Michel, London, Manchester, Barcelona, Sevilla and the Versailles Palace near Paris Jarre performed in Hong Kong on 11 March 1994, to mark the opening of the city's new stadium, as a continuation of the tour. The sold-out event included a range of entertainers, including bikini-clad Brazilians.
Jarre performed at the Concert for Tolerance on Bastille Day in 1995 (he had in 1993 accepted the offer to become a Goodwill Ambassador of Tolerance and Youth for UNESCO). In front of the Eiffel Tower he celebrated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, performing many of his most well-known hits. The tower was specially lit for the occasion, prompting the installation of a more permanent display. The following December he created a website called "A Space for Tolerance". The site featured music from En Attendant Cousteau, played while the user browsed a variety of 'visual worlds'.
Oxygène 7–13
After years of experimenting with new technology, with Oxygène 7–13 he returned to the analogue synthesisers of the Seventies. The album was released in 1997, more than 20 years after Oxygène, and was dedicated to his mentor at the GRM, Pierre Schaeffer, who had died in 1995. Eschewing the digital techniques developed in the 1980s, in an interview for The Daily Telegraph he said:
The excitement of being able to work on sounds in a tactile, manual, almost sensual way is what drew me to electronic music in the first place... The lack of limitations is very dangerous. It is like the difference for a painter of getting four tubes with four main colours or being in front of a computer with two million colours. You have to scan the two million colours and when you arrive to the last one you have obviously forgotten the first one. In the Eighties we became archivists and everything became rather cold as a result.
—Jean Michel Jarre,
On 6 September that year the Moscow State University became the backdrop for a spectacular display of image projections, skytrackers and fireworks. The event, celebrating the 850th anniversary of Moscow, was viewed by an audience of about 3.5 million, his fourth record for the largest ever outdoor concert audience. The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, had taken place on the same day, and the composer dedicated "Souvenir of China" to her memory, followed by a well-observed minute's silence.
In July 1998 he became the first artist spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. He rallied hundreds of musicians in a petition to the European Parliament over the proposed European Union Copyright Directive. He was succeeded in the post by The Corrs, in July 2000. On 31 December 1999 Jarre held a three-hour music and light show in the Egyptian desert near Giza. The Twelve Dreams of the Sun celebrated the new millennium and offered a preview of his next album, Métamorphoses. Beginning on New Year's Eve, the show featured performances from more than 1,000 local artists and musicians, and was based on ancient Egyptian mythology about the journey of the sun and its effect upon humanity. Addressing the audience, Jarre said "I hope the new millennium will witness international understanding".Jarre's anthemic work melded electronic music with Western jazz and Arabic rhythms and melodies, and was accompanied by lasers projected onto the backdrop of the pyramids and the great Sahara.
2000–2009
Métamorphoses
Jarre released Métamorphoses, his first vocal album, in 2000. The entire album was mixed on an early version of Pro Tools, a digital audio workstation designed to record, edit and play back digital audio. The compositions and their arrangement on this techno-based album co-produced with Joachim Garraud marked a departure from Jarre's previous style. Sound effects used include radio interference from mobile phones (used on the track "Tout est Bleu"), and Macintalk, a Macintosh program used to generate lyrics on the track "Love, Love, Love". Laurie Anderson makes her second guest appearance in the Jarre discography (her first was on Zoolook on the track "Diva". Other contributors include Natacha Atlas and Sharon Corr.
“Looking back, I enjoyed the album, [Oxygène 7–13] but after I finished it I knew that I had to make a fresh start. I had to go somewhere completely different. Metamorphoses is like a blank page for me, a new beginning.
—Jean Michel Jarre,
On 1 January 2001 Jarre and Tetsuya "TK" Komuro performed exclusive new material in Okinawa. Rendez-vous in Space was a tribute to the science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, a close friend of Jarre’s. Jarre used recordings of Clarke (filmed before the concert) to introduce each piece of music. The opening sequence of the concert was based on the theme from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Later that year, Jarre gave a charity concert for the Elpida Foundation at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
Sessions 2000
In 2001 he composed Interior Music, a demonstration piece for Bang and Olufsen. The album has not had a commercial release. On 6 September 2002 Jarre performed a concert at a windfarm near Gammel Vrå Enge, outside Aalborg in Denmark. A rain-soaked audience of between 35–40,000 watched him perform in front of a windfarm illuminated by lights and fireworks. The event was beset with problems, caused mainly by the 22mm of rain that fell on the venue — the organisers had anticipated only 4mm. Some fans reported a wait of six hours to leave the site, and one fan reported that a bus had blocked traffic when it slid into a ditch, and also that many ticket-holders were not allowed into the arena because thousands of gatecrashers had broken through a fence. The concert was however generally viewed as a success.
The event marked a change in direction in Jarre's live concerts; from Rendez-vous Houston onwards he had been accompanied on by a full complement of live musicians, however the concert in Aalborg demonstrated a marked reduction in the number of musicians on stage; Jarre was accompanied only by the Klarup Girls Choir, Francis Rimbert, Safri Duo, and the Aalborg Symphonic Orchestra. 2002 also saw the release of Sessions 2000, a set of more experimental synth-jazz pieces that were stylistically distinct from anything Jarre had previously released. The album was reviewed positively by Billboard Magazine, which wrote "He's [Jarre] created a deeply nuanced soundscape that invites repeated listening."
Geometry of Love
In 2003, Jarre released Geometry of Love. The album was commissioned by Jean Roch, as a soundtrack for his 'V.I.P. Room' nightclub in France, and contains a mix of 'electro-chill' music, with touches of his more traditional style. The following year, on 10 October, he returned to China for two performances, one in the Forbidden City at the Meridian Gate, followed immediately by a smaller concert in Tiananmen Square. Both were designed to open China’s "Year of France" cultural exchange. The concert was transmitted live across the country, and was also watched on large television screens at shopping centres in Beijing. Jarre opened the concert with a collaboration with Chen Lin, who played an Erhu. Accompanying his traditional musical repertoire, 600 projectors shone coloured light and images across various screens and objects. More than 15,000 spectators watched the concert at the Meridian Gate. A combined DVD/CD of these concerts, Jarre in China was released in 2004.
AERO
In September 2004, Jarre released AERO, both a DVD and a CD in one package. Purportedly the world's first album released for 5.1 systems, with it being fully "constructed" in 5.1 surround sound, it contains re-recorded versions of some of his most famous tracks, including tracks from Oxygène and Équinoxe. Accompanying the audio, the DVD features a visual image of Anne Parillaud's eyes, recorded in real time as she listened to the album. Jarre used the minimalist imagery to reinforce the audio content of the DVD. The CD was mixed in super-stereo.
In his role of UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Jarre performed a concert named Water for Life in Morocco, on 16 December 2006, to celebrate the year of desertification in the world.[71] The performance was in front of the Erg Chebbi Dunes of Merzouga, in the Sahara. A free event, it was attended by about 25,000 people. Images of water and the environment were projected onto nine vertical screens, held in place by sand which was watered to keep it hard. Several permanent drinking fountains were built on the site, along with a permanent electricity installation. Jarre was accompanied by over 60 Moroccan artists.
Téo & Téa
Jarre released Téo & Téa on 26 March 2007. He described the two computer-generated characters in the video clip of the title track as being "like twins", one female, one male. The album is supposed to describe the different stages of a loving relationship, and explores the idea that the length of such relationships is unpredictable. Its release demonstrated a move away from virtual instruments and computers that Jarre had been using up to that point; he instead chose to use a simplified range of devices, including several new prototype instruments. The album's cover was inspired by the David Lynch film Wild at Heart.
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