10-10-10 Project

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.

Mise au point

"Suite à une mauvaise interprétation, voire une mauvaise traduction d'une interview que j'ai donnée récemment au magazine anglais Uncut, je souhaite rectifier les propos qui me sont prêtés et qui courent un peu partout sur le net depuis ce matin.

Je n'ai jamais dit que l'Internet était mort, pas plus que je n'ai évoqué l'expression "imposture moche" à propos d'internet, qui est un outil dont je n'ai pas à vanter les évidents mérites!

J'ai simplement avancé l'idée, qu'après une époque où Internet est considéré comme un espace de liberté, une grande toile fraternelle sur laquelle tout le monde échange tout, plus ou moins gratuitement, il se pourrait bien que les rebelles de la prochaine génération "prennent le maquis" du web en considérant qu'il est devenu la plus grande machine d'exploitation de tous les temps, contrôlé par des multinationales bien plus puissantes que les majors du disque ne l'ont été par exemple, dans le domaine de la musique ces dernières années...

Ceci est un exemple, parmi d'autres, nous montrant que, constamment, n'importe quelle info circule, n'importe comment, sur le web. Notre responsabilité et la plus grande difficulté de notre relation, dans les années à venir avec le web, va être de vérifier la véracité du flot d'informations que nous recevons à chaque seconde, en particulier quand on les relaie.. Bon courage.

Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel Jarre in Santiago de Compostella July 31st 2010 - Time Lapse

MOJO Lifetime Achievement Award 2010 Video

The tour in pictures

JMJ and Pierre are continuing their foray into photography

Tour 2010 on Fotopedia

Special message to the fans

Dear Friends,

First of all, I would like to pay tribute to all my fans around the world who are supporting my work constantly.

It has been one of the most encouraging elements of my life, and particularly this past year, for all the reasons you know.

The feedback, I receive from you all, night after night, in each city I am playing at the moment, is just great and gives me the energy to go on.

I want you to know that I share this Mojo Award with you all, around the world, because in a sense I feel that you deserve it also...

Love,

Jean Michel Jarre

Magic and Amazing Istambul

Istambul 2010 on Fotopedia

16 million people, 4 times as many as Paris.. a perfect mix of Ottoman beauty, European and Asian style, also a perfect mix of tradition and extreme modernity. A total surprise for all of us, the city has changed so much, yet managed to keep its soul at the same time..

Under a very hot temperature, we joined the band at the hotel, then went to see the stage and the crew. Everybody was excited to be together again. We had a dinner in a cool terrace by the Bosphorus organized by Zeynep our charming promoter.. The following morning we went with the musicians to some music stores where Claude and I bought some great and rare turkish cymbals..

Later we went to the venue by boat to do the sound check under 40 degrees... The instruments were so hot that I could not touch my Memory Moog. We did a decent rehearsal, the most challenging moment being to try the laser harp under the sun! We had to cover the captors and wait till sunset to check it..

Then the concert started at 21h40.. I had to climb the back of the grand stand to appear at the top of it, at the beginning of the show, quite an experience.. The concert went really well, in spite of the fact that we did not have our regular PA system and that I was really burning on stage with the extreme heat.. The turkish audience was as hot as the weather and we had a great evening together..

The following day, I had a few meetings, I saw a strange audio/ visual installation, part of a large art exhibition organised at the occasion of Istanbul being European cultural capital 2010. The audio part of this installation is produced by Aphex Twin. In the evening, we all had dinner at a beautiful villa owned by two sisters, lovely women, one being involved in an association taking care of autistic children in Turkey, the other is involved in Soufi music, and she played us incredible recordings of traditional turkish music.

Then we went all together by boat on the Bosphorus to the old part of Istanbul to visit some place they have in mind for a future outdoor concert. We'll see.. Anyway, the trip on the river in the middle of the night surronded by old Mosques, was awesome.

A Memorable Night

After Bucharest, I went for 2 days to Beirut to check the site before the July concerts there. Amazing city, I took a lot of pictures (they are on their way..). I shall tell you more about it in July. Then I spent the beginning of the week promoting the concerts in France.

And then yesterday I was in London to receive a life achievement award at the Mojo Music Awards. The ceremony took place at the Brewery and what happened was an absolute surprise for me..

Such a brilliant audience was attending the event.. Jimmy Page, members of Depeche mode, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Devo,
Florence and the Machine, Anthony and the Johnsons, Blur, Stone Roses, Jarvis Cocker, Roger Daltrey, Emilou Harris, Mark Almond from Softcell.. either receiving or giving an award. At the end of the ceremony, John Foxx from Ultravox presented the
award to me..

I have been so moved by what Phil Alexander, the chief editor of Mojo magazine and John said about my music and my concerts. How new, different and influential it has been until now.. what an honor coming from such brilliant artists and in London!!

John Foxx also had an interesting view, he said that in England, he was feeling that the style of british pop and rock music was initially coming from America. When he listened to Oxygene, he felt that this music was totally european and had nothing to do with the US, and for him it was the signal that something totally different was happening. John is a delightful man and a great artist I always admired and receiving this award from his hands was really special for me.

I was deeply impressed when I came on stage, in front of a such brilliant and warm audience so kind to me. I told them that it means a lot to me coming from MOJO, specially because I have always had a special relationship with England for artistic and personal reasons, and that I feel rather like a beginner, doing my first real world tour in 2010. There are so many things to do out there in so many fields. So I hope to come back in 20 years to receive eventually a life achievement award part 2...

Afterwards I discussed with Jimmy Page, such a nice and friendly man, and Anthony ( from A.& the Johnsons) about our mutual friend Laurie Anderson. She lost her copy of Zoolook and she would like a new one.. I discussed also with Jarvis Cocker, J.J. Brunel from the Stranglers who is from Normandy and speaks fluent french. He said he would come to the concert in Caen in November with his family. Mark Almond is going at the London gig at the O2 arena on the 10/10/10..

And then on the way back to Paris this morning, I met briefly Jude Law, Sienna Miller and their three children, going to Paris as well in the Eurostar, a very nice couple...

The tour in pictures

Taken by JMJ, who has decided to become his own photograph for this leg.


Liberec in color


Liberec in black & white


A poor lonesome robot far away from home


Liberec, 1910 or 2010


Claude in the move


Jérôme and Claude on the way to Bratislava



Debriefing after the show



Party time..




Jérôme in the bus



In the bus



Ghosts in the cabin



The new tour bus



4am stop on a slovakian highway





Vincent and Luc, backstage in Liberec



Colorful Hungary, far from Soviet Union times



Chris Rowley, Fiona Commins, Claude Samard, Francis Rimbert and new member of the band, Jerome Gueguen



Self-portrait backstage in Budapest

Update

The past few weeks have been difficult.

My Mum passed away the 21st of April… sad, painful, a boy always thinks his mother is eternal.

Then Dominique Perrier told me that he could not be with us in the tour for family reasons and I had to find a quick solution three weeks before Budapest. Fortunately Domino has a good friend, Jerome Gueguen, excellent musician, with whom he has been playing on other projects for a long time.

We rehearsed everything, Domino showed him every detail of his parts, and I must say that Jerome has been quite amazing.
The first concert went almost perfectly and Jerome found the way to be faithful to Dominique’s style plus adding his own personal touch.

I must say that the tour is really going well and every night we are delivering something special… The crew is becoming a real family and Jerome is already totally part of it .

The audiences are really great everywhere - lots of electricity in the air.. !
I also try to give the maximum of energy like if it was a one off every night..

Greece was special, because of the crisis you can feel people feeling abandonned by the rest of the world…More than ever artists and citizens of the world must be close to the Greek community, the cradle of civilisation which gave us so much in so many fields…we must never forget that.
Also for this reason, we really gave everything we had on-stage, both in Tessaloniki and Athens, to a fantastic audience.

Tessaloniki was the first outdoor gig of the world tour, however, the venue being a historical site, limiting weight and installations, we could not hang the cyclo.
I decided then that we should use the site itself, as it is, by projecting films and lights on the trees.
The result was quite fantomatic and very encouraging for the future outdoor gigs where we should have our big screen.

Liberec and Bratislava were also unique because of the venues and the audience. Bratislava is such a lovely city with a lot of good vibes for me. I really would like to come back soon for an outdoor concert by the castle (love to Iveta, Fred and Milan !).

A lot of things are in store for the second part of the year… Because of what happened to me recently, I decided to go not to far away from home this year. A lot of concerts in France, UK and other countries in Europe and going to the US, South America and Asia in 2011. My agent came to Athens and we made quite precise plans about all this.

Next week, I have to go to London to prepare the UK tour, with a possible second 3D filming of the autumn leg and to receive an award from MOJO magazine. I also hope to have the energy to finalise some of the new tracks I have for the coming concerts and new album sometime.

I thank you all, my dear and loyal fans around the world, for your support recently, it has been of a great help to me ...

Love,

JM

The Sound of Silence

The first part of the tour is over, and while we're organizing the new leg, all the team is back home enjoying some rest. Now that I have more time, I want to explore different directions, and in particular the notion of silence. I am sure you have noticed how the first few seconds of silence at the end of a track feel like they still belong to that track. To the best of my knowledge, the only work of importance ever composed in this field is the minute of silence played in solemn occasions, but I find the arrangement a bit basic. I would like to compose a silent album that would retain melodies, and mix the warm grain of analog silence and some sampled silence as well. Expect to hear something soon. Or not.