Jean Michel Jarre

JEAN MICHEL JARRE. French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic ambient and New Age genres and is well known as an organiser of cutting-edge outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, lasers and fireworks. His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygene which he recorded in a makeshift studio at his home (the album has now sold an estimated 12 million copies). This was followed in 1978 by Equinox and in 1979 he performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde (a record he has since broken three times). 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 more well known as a performer than as a musician. As of 2004 Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums. He was the first Western musician officially invited to perform in the Peoples Republic of China and currently holds the world record for the largest-ever audience at an outdoor event .....