Epic electronic artist takes show on road
Electronic dance music titans like Tiesto and Armin van Buuren are accustomed to standing in front of 100,000 or more fans while headlining summer festivals. But there’s only one artist who can say he’s plied his trade on stage with 3.5 million listeners in attendance.
“When are you are outdoors, with such a big audience, you have an informal, cool atmosphere,” says Jean-Michel Jarre, the French electronic composer who played in front of that massive crowd in Moscow on the occasion of the city’s 850th birthday. “And it makes a sort of intimacy — it’s strange.”
Yet Jarre, who holds the Guinness World Record for largest concert and has played to more than a million people
at once in Houston and on multiple occasions in his home country, had never brought a multi-date tour to the United States until his current “Electronica” jaunt. Jarre brings the tour, which is named for his two-part album of 2015 and 2016, to the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Friday, May 26, for his second-to-last performance in North America.
For the forward-looking Jarre, his reluctance to tour previously comes at least partially from a perfectionist streak, one that wouldn’t allow for the composer to hit the road with a show not technologically capable of keeping up with his vision. He estimates there are 50 to 60 synthesizers accompanying him on tour, from analogue up to the iPad, and the show’s visual component involves 3-D optical illusions visible without the use of glasses. These are complex, technical rigs, ones that the arenas of the past could not handle.
“If we remember this period, (arenas) were made for you to have a Monday hockey game, a Tuesday political party, a Wednesday fair, and then you play on Thursday,” he says. “The acoustics weren’t done for (music). I always felt that electronic music, we have to be very careful, because if the sound is not perfect, you end up with a big mess.”
There was no question that Jarre would have been able to sell tickets for such a tour. His 1976 album, “Oxygene,” sold 15 million copies and helped usher in the synthheavy sound of the late ’70s. (In the years since, he’s released two “Oxygene” followups.) In terms of stature, Jarre shares a similarity with German electronic pioneer Giorgio Moroder, the main difference being influence and direction: Moroder aimed for dance floors, while Jarre was as much composer as songwriter.
Comparatively, the “Electronica” duo of albums behind which Jarre is touring is a sort of an outlier. Pairing with a different guest on every song, Jarre and friends collaborate on several dancefloor-ready tracks. And if an artist’s influence is measurable by whom he or she can wrangle for such a project, Jarre’s is outsize: The Who’s Pete Townshend, Moby, Hans Zimmer and even Edward Snowden each appear over the course of the two records. But it was one, perhaps unexpected, guest in particular who gave Jarre the inspiration for the name.
“I was looking for what could be the Greek muse of electronic music ... Elektra was the Greek muse of energy, before electricity. I considered that Electronica could be the daughter of Elektra,” he explains. “I heard Julia Holter, and when I heard her, I said this album was going to be called ‘Electronica’ because Electronica is this girl. She has this ethereal, folk kind of voice, but at the same time she was recording sounds at the cafe and she would put her vocal on just noises, like John Cage would do. This is exactly what I need.”
That project earned Jarre his first Grammy nomination (for best dance/electronic album) and started this American adventure. Two decades on from his recordsetting Moscow performance and 41 years removed from the first “Oxygene,” Jarre finally gets to take his music — 50-plus synthesizers and all — across the United States.
“The North American tour, this is for me quite relevant for different reasons,” he says. “I worked with a lot of American artists . ... This whole thing came about because of these personal and professional connections.”