Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygen (2006) CasTaN

Jean Michel André Jarre (born 24 August 1948 in Lyon) is a French composer, performer and
music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and known as
an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring 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 by 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 sold 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 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 as well known as a
performer as well 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 People's Republic of China, and holds the world record for the largest-ever
audience at an outdoor event.
1976 – Grand Prix du Disque by L'Académie Charles Cros, for Oxygène