3 Summer Outdoor Concerts

31/7: Santiago de Compostela, Spain


Gothic and spiritual ambiance.. Monsignor Barrio gave for the first time, a special agreement to build the stage on the stairs of the cathedral.. The result was quite spectacular, with the façade of the church directly behind us.

The stage was at 6 meters high, and i got slightly dizzy during the laser harp! What I really enjoyed were the live videos in B&W directly projected on the walls in a ghostly, haunted mood. The whole atmosphere particularly during songs such as Rendez Vous 2 & 3 ,Chronology 2 and Fin De Siècle was very "Phantom of the Opera".. The concert was broadcast live on Spanish TV and the Spanish female director did a good job with a quite cinematographic approach.




28/8: Oslo, Norway


An outdoor concert took place for the first time in the central Oslo in front of the Royal castle. It was a kind of festival, with different bands and I closed the event by a concert starting at 10:30, with Royksopp playing just before us...

Coming straight from the south of France, it was quite a shock to be in Norway with around 10 degrees and a pouring rain.. Fortunately the rain stopped 2mn before we got on stage.

The crew was really happy to get together again after the August break, the mood was really warm, and we delivered quite a good show in front of a pretty young audience. The sound and the energy of the music plus the impact of the visuals demonstrated that the production is ready for any kind of big festival. Everybody was quite excited..


18/9: Beirut souks, Lebanon


After having been postponed twice because of logistics issues and then the Ramadan, the concert finally took place yesterday night at the Beirut souks in a totally crazy atmosphere..

Extraordinary city, being rebuilt so quickly by Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Solidere, Beirut is so full of energy. The new generation who used to go to school under constant bombing have learnt the value of being alive and they hardly sleep, working during the day and having fun every night... Clubs such as the Sky bar or the White are full all the time with probably amongst the best sound systems on the planet.

At 37 degrees, the sound check was hot and hectic with a lot of technical problems due to the heat. The lebanese audience was definitely hot and we had great time in spite of a few problems on my side. The digisequencer refused to work (probably overheating too!), meaning we had no sequence in Oxygene 2 and Oxygene 5. Patrick came behind me to reset it while we were desperately improvising to give him enough time to reload the sequence.. Risks and magic of live performance..

Apart from this glitch, we had great time and finished the night at the Sky bar... This morning I visited my friend Bahia Hariri ( Rafik Hariri's sister), Unesco ambassador and President of the Rafik Hariri Fundation for Education, cultural development and for Women. We had an interesting conversation about the future of Beirut, Lebanon and the all Middle East. She talked me through all the activities of the fundation.. She is an extraordinary person and a luck for Lebanon and all Middle East..

We decided that we should get together more often to promote her projects.