Jean-Michel Jarre
France, 1968–now
French composer who took the Paris avant-garde out of the laboratory and into stadiums. He learned tape-loop musique concrete under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry at the GRM, then recorded Oxygene (1976) alone in the kitchen of his Rue de la Tremoille flat on a bank of borrowed oscillators; it sold in the millions. In 1979 he played to over a million people at the Place de la Concorde, the first concert ever to do so, and has broken his own record three times since.
MusicRoots documents 7 artists who influenced Jean-Michel Jarre and 4 artists Jean-Michel Jarre influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.
Who influenced Jean-Michel Jarre?
- Pierre Schaeffer — Jarre's style was most heavily shaped by Pierre Schaeffer — he joined Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1969 and learned tape-loop musique concrète under him from 1968 to 1972.
- Karlheinz Stockhausen — Jarre was introduced to the Moog modular synthesizer while working at Stockhausen's Cologne studio — the electronic avant-garde behind his synth-driven sound.
- Pierre Henry — The other teacher at the GRM, and the one Jarre kept coming back to: he was still planning a record with Henry when Henry died in 2017, and used the sound he had recorded on Oxymore anyway.
- Terry Riley — Where the repetition comes from. Jarre was an assistant at the Chateau d'Herouville preparing sequences for a Terry Riley album, and the pulsing sequencer figures that carry Oxygene are that idea put through a synthesizer.
- Philip Glass — Named in the same breath as Riley, for the same reason — a figure held and turned rather than developed.
- Pink Floyd — The proof that the experiment could be popular. Jarre set out to bridge pure electronic research and pop, and says he took the example from bands working intuitively in that space.
- Isao Tomita — Tomita's synthesizer orchestrations of 1974 preceded and fed the lush, wordless electronic albums Jarre built his career on.
Which artists did Jean-Michel Jarre influence?
- Michael Cretu — Cretu's lush, melodic synth soundscapes belong to the same ambient-electronic tradition that Jean-Michel Jarre popularised.
- ATB — Jarre is the other idol Tanneberger names — the melodic, synthesizer-led electronic music he heard growing up in East Germany, where Western records were hard to come by. He went on to remix Jarre's 'Vintage' officially in 2007.
- Space — Fellow French synth pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre was a kindred reference — Space's '(Do You Have) The Force' nods directly to him.
- Miha Kralj — Kralj heard Jarre in 1979 and changed direction on the spot — bought a Korg sequencer and a polyphonic synth and became the first one-man band in Yugoslavia. The press ended up calling him the Yugoslav Jean-Michel Jarre.