Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Kanta]

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer (1/5): “There is only one way to be in front of a mixing console”

Pioneer in the field of electronic music in France, Jean Michel Jarre is back in stores with his 22nd album "Oxymore", an innovative musical project, designed and composed in multichannel and binaural. The opportunity for our team to meet the musician passionate about technology.

In this first episode of the Grands Entretiens, Jean-Michel Jarre evokes the silence of the night, which resounds in his childhood with the absence of his father, the composer Maurice Jarre. In Lyon, with his grandparents, the young Jean-Michel discovered a passion for circus caravans, real moments of unique shows. A concept that will etch his memory forever.

Source: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu ... ge-8431022

[Kanta]

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer (2/5): "Soulages' painting formalizes the night".

Between an oboist-inventor grandfather and a resistant mother who frequented the Puces de Saint-Ouen and the Chat-Qui-Pêche cabaret, Jean-Michel Jarre had a musical childhood full of adventures! We will also discuss the links that our guest maintains with painting, he who even hesitated to become a visual artist.

Source: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu ... it-5835431

[Kanta]

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer (3/5): “The GRM revolution is our revolution”.

Jean-Michel Jarre hears about the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM) by word of mouth . Led by Pierre Schaeffer, the GRM appears as a pocket of freedom and poetry that resonates with the desires of our guest. Jean-Michel Jarre meets many musicians there, and evokes with relish the works of Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, François Bayle, Beatrice Ferrara...

Source: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu ... on-8245911

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer (4/5): "I want to convey an emotion with sound and light"

The links between music and light have always been at the heart of Jean-Michel Jarre's work. A shock experienced for the first time with Xenakis' Polytopes. To highlight a place during a unique performance, Jarre uses both stylized projections ("mapping") and an instrument he popularizes: the laser harp.

"I want to compose the soundtrack of the film that people make in their heads"

Source: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu ... -5-1734710

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer (5/5): "We only recreate our own obsessions"

For the last part of our Grands Entretiens with Jean-Michel Jarre, we begin with a detour to the concert given by the musician in Houston in 1986, undoubtedly one of his most intense and striking. Then we will go behind the scenes of the mythical album Oxygene, of his very last disc Oxymore, and will also evoke significant collaborations of the Electronica project, in particular an encounter with "the melancholic animal" Moby.

Source: https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu ... ns-9324192

[Richard-Eastham]

A shock experienced for the first time with Xenakis' Polytopes

Just been looking up Iannis Xenakis as I hadn't heard of him before, and wow! ... I can see why his works were such an inspiration to JMJ. That concept of linking architecture, light and music in a very formal and experimental way. And then JMJ did the same but in a more popular, mass market and accessible way?

Iannis Xenakis also was a GRM member: "In late 1954, with Messiaen's support, Xenakis was accepted into the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète; an organization established by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, dedicated to studying and producing electronic music of the musique concrète variety"

Polytope of Cluny (1972-1974) by Iannis Xenakis looks very much like Mark Fisher's design for the China Concerts too.

https://www.iannis-xenakis.org/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis