Jean Michel André Jarre

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He is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is regarded as a pioneer in the electronic, synthpop, ambient and New Age genres, as well as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music which feature lights, laser displays and fireworks.

Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents, and trained on the piano. From an early age he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène. Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album went on to sell an estimated 12 million copies. Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979 Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken on three separate occasions. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world. Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, and he is now perhaps as well known as a performer, as he is a musician.

Jarre has sold an estimated 80 million albums and singles. He was the first western musician to be allowed to perform in the People's Republic of China, and holds the world record for the largest ever audience at an outdoor event. He has three children, and is married to French actress Anne Parillaud.

Early life, influences, and education:

Jarre was born in Lyon on 24 August 1948, the son of composer Maurice Jarre, and French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor France Jarre (nee Pejot).[2][3][4] His parents separated when he was five years old, his father moved to the United States, and Jarre remained with his mother in the suburbs of Paris. Jarre would not meet his father again until he was eighteen. He was born into a family of artists; his Grandfather, André Jarre, was an oboe player, an engineer, and an inventor. André perfected the first audio mixer, used at Radio Lyon, and also gave Jean Michel his first record player. For the first eight years of his life, for six months of each year he resided at his Grandparent's flat along the Cours de Verdun, in the Perrache district of Lyon. The young Jarre would watch street performers from the window of the flat, and has cited their music as an influence on his art (traces of this can be found on his album Équinoxe, particularly "Équinoxe Part 8").

It was around this age that he studied classical piano. The experience proved difficult, but several years later he changed teachers and began to work on his musical scales. His more general interest in musical instruments was sparked by the discovery of a 'trumpet violin' created by Boris Vian, found at the Saint-Ouen flea market where his mother sold antiques. His mother regularly took him to her friend's Paris jazz club, Le Chat Qui Pêche (The Fishing Cat) where saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, and trumpet players Don Cherry and Chet Baker regularly performed. As an art form, Jazz introduced Jarre to the idea that music may be "descriptive, without lyrics".He was also influenced by the work of French artist Pierre Soulages; aged 14–15 he viewed an exhibition by the artist at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Soulages' paintings used multiple textured layers, and Jarre would later reflect on the experience — "...I suddenly realised that for the first time in music, you could act as a painter with frequencies and sounds." Jarre was also influenced by more traditional 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.

   —Jean Michel Jarre, 

By now a young man, to fund his lifestyle he became a painter, exhibiting some of his works at the Lyon Gallery — L'Oeil Ecoute. He also played in a band called Mystère IV (Mystery 4). While he studied at the Lycée Michelet his mother arranged for him to take lessons in harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Jeannine Rueff of the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1967 he played guitar in a band called The Dustbins. Jarre experimented by mixed several instruments, including the electric guitar and the flute, with tape effects and other sounds. The band appears in the film Des garçons et des filles.

In 1968 he began to experiment with tape loops, radios, and other electronic devices. He joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1969 under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer, the 'father' of musique concrète. Jarre's time at GRM proved hugely influential — Schaeffer's view was that "music isn't made of notes, it's made of sounds".He also introduced Jarre to the Moog modular synthesizer. At this time Jarre lived in Paris along Rue de la Trémoille, near the Champs-Élysées. In the kitchen of his flat he set up a small recording studio, which included EMS VCS 3 and EMS Synthi AKS synthesizers and two linked Revox tape machines.

Personal life:

Jarre met his second wife Charlotte Rampling at a dinner party in St Tropez in 1976.

   I knew who she was because I had admired her films — The Night Porter, The Damned — and I was immediately struck by Charlotte's stillness and her remote quality. I remember thinking she seemed less sophisticated than she was on the screen. She didn't say very much, I learnt very early on that Charlotte is not a chatterbox.

   —Jean Michel Jarre, 

   Michel was magnetic. Having just flown in from Los Angeles I was tired, rather silent and didn't pick up on the intensity of what I felt until three days later. I went to Paris the next day to promote Farewell My Lovely. I must have mentioned where I was staying to Jean-Michel because he phoned me and we met, and that's when it all started. A long weekend at the Lancaster — still my favourite hotel.

   —Charlotte Rampling, 

Both were already in failing marriages, but they each obtained a divorce (Rampling was married to Bryan Southcombe). The two married, Jarre gaining custody of his daughter Émilie Charlotte, and Rampling her son Barnaby. Together they have a son, David. In 1995 photographs in Hello! showed Jarre apparently romantically involved with 31-year old secretary Odile Froument, and in 1996 Jarre and Rampling separated. They divorced in 2002. He had a brief relationship with Isabelle Adjani, but married French actress Anne Parillaud in May 2005. Jarre has a half-brother and a half-sister from his father's other marriages, Kevin Jarre and Stéphanie Jarre, and remained estranged from his father. On his father's death in 2009, however, Jarre paid tribute to his legacy.

   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.

   —Jean Michel Jarre, 

Jean Michel Jarre discography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre_discography

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre

Taken from http://www.electricblahblah.com/Biography.htm

Jarre was married to Flore Guillard from 20 January 1975 until 1977. Later he was married to British actress and photographer Charlotte Rampling from 7 October 1978 until 1997, after Jarre had an affair with the then 31-year-old secretary Odile Froment. In 2002 he became publicly engaged to French actress Isabelle Adjani, but later she ended this relationship. On 12 May 2005 he married French actress Anne Parillaud.