REVIEW: Jean-Michel Jarre
Smart Financial Centre
Sugar Land, Texas
April 10, 2018
Universally known as one of the earliest pioneers of electronic music, French composer, performer and music producer Jean-Michel Jarre (who began recording synthesizer-based compositions in 1971) is also internationally renowned for staging many of the most powerful and elaborate concert events in modern music history. From the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Forbidden City in Beijing and London’s Docklands to the Acropolis in Athens, South Africa’s Lost City and at the foot of Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Jarre has almost single-handedly revolutionized the live outdoor concert-going experience for millions of people from all corners of the globe.
His most iconic outdoor performance, held on April 6, 1986, in Houston, Texas, would forever cement the reputation of Jean-Michel (the son of award-winning composer Maurice Jarre) as an innovative live performer and an unyielding electronic musical force to be reckoned with. The unforgettable state-of-the-art concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Texas, titled “Rendez-Vous Houston” (a collaboration with the City Hall and NASA), had Jarre mastering his symphonic bank of synthesizers (and backing musicians) to produce seemingly out-of-this-world soundscapes in the middle of Downtown, as lights and lasers shot throughout and above the Bayou City skyline. An estimated 1.3 million Americans, many of whom camped out for days to experience the event, were able to witness the performance firsthand. The attendance at the Houston show would garner Jarre his second entry in the Guinness Book of Records. For the next three decades, Jarre would go on to produce the previously-mentioned global concert events and selling an estimated 80 million albums worldwide.
There is a whole generation of Space City music fans who remember “Rendez-Vous” quite vividly and have religiously followed Jean-Michel’s career ever since. Additionally, having been dubbed “the Godfather of Electronic Music” by modern EDM DJs, songwriters and composers, the 69-year-old maverick has amassed a whole new legion of contemporary devotees. Consequently, when it was announced that the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, Texas (a city approximately 22 miles from Downtown Houston) would play host to phase one of his “Electronica World Tour,” music-lovers both young and old were filled with unbridled anticipation at the chance to witness Jean-Michel Jarre’s return to the Houston area after 32 years. It would prove to be a triumphant musical homecoming!
Performing compositions from Oxygene (his 1976 international hit album) to his recent 2016 release, Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise, Jarre took the eager audience onto a musical journey into a universe of his timeless music and vision. Aurally combining cutting-edge digital technology with “old school” analogue synthesizers and highlighting his music with a visually stunning display of jaw-dropping, well-choreographed laser, lights and video projection, Jarre successfully amalgamated sound and vision for a sensory satisfying evening that confirmed his 1986 Houston concert was merely a harbinger of more magnificent things to come.
During the nearly two-hour performance, Jarre would draw on equal doses of new music as well as famed compositions from his past. He would play three movements from Oxygene (which celebrated the 40th anniversary of its release in 2016) plus two parts from the newly-released Oxygene 3, the final chapter of his “Oxygene” trilogy. Equinoxe, his 1978 album, was also represented throughout concert (with two parts). He also offered up the dance track “Zoolookologie” from 1984’s Zoolook, his revolutionary release that combined his trademark sound with vocal intonations based on recordings of speech and singing in numerous languages and a record number of sampled sounds fed through his Fairlight CMI synthesizer.
Audience favorites during the 22-song set included his collaboration with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the song “Exit” from Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise. When the video image of a talking Snowden appeared on the stage’s main screen, the vast majority of the audience cheered in approval at his warnings about technology interference and the way our private details are transmitted online. The sixth encore and final song of the evening would be “Quatrième Rendez-Vous (Fourth Movement).” The composition, from his eighth album Rendez-vous (1986), has a deep and special meaning, not only to Jarre but to the citizens of Houston, many of whom are longtime employees and supporters of NASA. The song was originally scheduled to include a saxophone part recorded by astronaut Ron McNair on the Space Shuttle Challenger, becoming the first piece of music to be recorded in space. That didn’t happen, of course, because the Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after lift-over (January 28, 1986) and the entire crew was killed. Many of the audience members had tears in their eyes as they cheered and continued to applaud until the house lights were brought up.
Although Jarre has performed in front of 2.5 million people in Paris, 3.5 million in Moscow and 1.3 million the last time he was in Houston, seeing and hearing Jarre perform in a relatively intimate setting was an enlightening and rare once-in-a-lifetime concert experience. Jean-Michel would go on to play the Coachella Festival a few days later (to rave reviews) and he is planning to perform at several international music festivals this summer. It is hard to say when fans of the electro-Frenchman will ever be able to catch him again in such an up-close and personal manner. Let’s just pray for those who missed the Sugar Land/Houston date that it won’t be another three decades before they can experience the magic... one more time . #fingerscrossed
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