Six decades in and Jean-Michel Jarre remains driven to rewrite electronic music history. Since 1972, his name has been synonymous with innovation: his breakthrough third album, Oxygène, selling 18 million copies to spearhead the synth revolution of the 1970s.
From the first modular synths to the rise of digital recording - and now artificial intelligence, Jarre’s fascination with technology continues unabated, bridging the avant-garde and the mainstream through visionary albums and live performances.
This month, the seemingly ageless innovator unveils Live in Bratislava, capturing his spectacular open-air concert Bridge from the Future, staged in Slovakia, May 2024. Drawing over 100,000 spectators to the banks of the Danube, with millions more joining via global broadcast, it’s been described as Jarre’s most ambitious live production to date.
The show transformed Bratislava’s UFO Bridge into a futuristic stage framed by twin 30-metre towers with lasers, fireworks, a 400-drone ballet and cutting-edge visual storytelling. And if that wasn’t enough, the concert featured an historic collaboration with Queen guitarist Sir Brian May, alongside the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.
MusicRadar: What were the circumstances that led you to perform the spectacular one-off live show in Bratislava in 2024?
Jean-Michel Jarre: “It was linked to a collaboration I’ve had for quite a few years with an organisation called Starmus, funded and initiated by Stephen Hawking. We're now funded by astrophysicist Dr Garik Israelian and Brian May, who we all know as the musician but he’s also an astrophysicist.
“We always thought that it would be interesting to create a spectacular launch for this annual gathering of scientists, musicians and private entrepreneurs from all over the world to try to think about our society and transmit some of the values linked to the sciences, art and culture. Technology and science have always been part of my life as an artist, so it felt logical to be involved in this kind of project.”
MR: You’ve obviously performed some huge shows in the past, but in what way would you say Bratislava was your most ambitious?
JMJ: “When I started my career, Italian film director Federico Fellini told me something quite relevant. He said, “Whenever I made a movie, I always thought it was totally different from the last, but looking back I always made the same one”.
“What he meant by that is whether you’re Tarantino or Kubrick, filmmakers are always telling us the same thing and each movie is a declaration of their style.
"As artists, we are obsessed with fine-tuning something that we want to achieve and I've always been interested in performing electronic music that involves stage design and visual elements. I was one of the first to start mapping visuals onto buildings, and have restarted this expression because it’s still interesting to discover how I can push the boundaries with the technology of our times.
“Over the past few years, I've been quite involved with AI from a visual point of view and used it to conceive all the stage design for the project. With AI, you have the tools to achieve things that would have been impossible even 10 or 15 years ago, and Bratislava was a good example of that with lots of talented visual technicians involved in AI, lasers and video.”
MR: The concert is titled Bridge from the Future. How does that relate to the spectacle in terms of visual storytelling and choreography?
JMJ: “From the beginning, the idea was to make the performance relevant to the launching of the Starmus festival - the first cycle of which was based on Stephen Hawking and our relationship from earth vis-à-vis space, but the idea for this second part was to reverse that.
“We don't know the future, but our dreams or esoteric concepts are probably the reality of tomorrow, and through art, music and science I like the idea of trying to create a bridge from the future to the present using elements that, by definition, we think will exist.”
MR: You’re known for playing one-man shows, but this time you have other musicians on stage. Is that to reduce your reliance on technology?
JMJ: “I’m constantly moving from having a band to working within an electronic music concept with backing sequences, but I sometimes mix both. Because the scale of the staging was quite ambitious and we were in the middle of Bratislava, which is a kind of megalopolis, I thought it would be good to introduce musicians like Brian May and create a band, not just with drums, synthesisers and guitars, but classical elements like choir and trombone to create an epic impact.
MR: What lay behind your choice of the GRP A4 modular synthesiser as your main keyboard for the show?
JMJ: “At the end of the day, we’re analog animals living in a digital age, so I love using a mixture of old analog gear and digital. Of course, the violin is much older, but we don't call it ‘old’ because it’s a timeless instrument.
“For me, the Moog Modular and the Italian GRP are brilliant instruments that are also timeless, and it's very interesting to mix them with AI tools or pure digital interfaces. That’s what today is all about – sometimes you drive an electric car, sometimes you ride a bike. As a musician, I love to deal with these oxymorons.”
MR: We also noticed you have an EMS VCS 3 on stage. Is that because you wanted to faithfully reproduce sounds that appeared on your original recordings?
JMJ: “Yes, but there’s also a fetishist aspect because using it on stage has almost become a ritual. The VCS 3 is my first synth so I have become superstitious and want to involve it in everything I do, but it's also an opportunity to use crazy sound effects during moments of transition or to inspire my colour palette.”
MR: What other technologies were integral to your live performance?
JMJ: “I have a new French digital interface that I use a lot called the Embodme Erae Touch, which is like a tablet in the shape of an iPad but slightly bigger and thicker. It's a tactile controller, but it works with X, Y and Z touch data rather than just X and Y and you can alter the velocity, which gives you much more possibilities for playing and performing.
“I've got four or five Eraes controlling lots of different things like volume and sound effects, but it can trigger sequences too so it’s quite an important part of my gear setup.”
MR: What’s the circular device that you also tapped every now and then?
JMJ: “That’s a Roland HandSonic, which is an electronic percussion device. You can trigger up to 16 different sounds per song, changing from one track to another by MIDI control. Most of the time, I keep to the 16 sounds that I programmed for the show, which allows me to really play with them - a little bit like a drummer.”
MR: Suppose we take a classic Jarre track like Oxygene 2 – will you remodel it to keep things interesting for yourself as much as the audience?
JMJ: “It's a very interesting question. Next year, I’m doing a world tour and we'll actually play the UK, France and the US, but I did a series of shows recently where we could change a track like Oxygene 2 each time we played to make it specific to a venue.
“For instance, in Bratislava I thought it would be interesting to create a long intro for Oxygene 2 playing alongside young British performer, composer and producer Adiescar Chase. We created a kind of duet where I played an electronic flute in dialogue with her electric violin, so I try to keep the structure of the song while changing some elements or instruments to keep me excited.”
MR: Brian May’s performance was extraordinary. Did you rehearse together or is he able to improvise at the drop of a hat?
JMJ: “We worked a lot together prior to the gig. Of course, he's an extraordinary and talented musician, but also an extraordinary scientist and human being and we had lots of thoughts about his involvement. From the beginning, Brian said, okay, it's your show and I'm going to be a guest trying to integrate into your project, which was a big effort because playing with totally electronic arrangements and integrating into a project is a different world from Queen where he always has full control of the on-stage concept.
“I think the result was amazing and we really connected even though we were confronted by lots of technical aspects. For instance, with electronic music we’re used to using ear monitors so I can be more precise, but as a pure rock guitar player Brian cannot conceive of using them.
"He's always playing with wedges, but I find that having three big amps and wedges all over the stage is a kind of hell [laughs]. So we both had to try to survive totally different monitoring concepts, but created something quite unique that I hope people can feel in the end result.”
MR: Are there other artists you'd been keen to perform with live?
JMJ: “It's just a matter of availability. I was really blown away by my collaboration with Pete Townshend some years ago on my Electronica project. He’s a very good example of somebody who belongs to rock music history but is very aware of new technologies. He was actually one of the first musicians to introduce electronics to rock music, so he’s another pioneer who I’d be very happy to join forces with one day.”
MR: What other technical challenges did you have to deal with for a concert of such size and scale?
JMJ: “Because we were playing outdoors we had to depend on the rain and the wind, get some live miking for the acoustic instruments and choir, amps for the electric guitars, and a direct line output from the electronic keyboards, which created lots of technical challenges. Plus the fact we were filming the show, so there were technical issues around time coding, radio frequencies and transmission.”
MR: And you had lots of fireworks going off as well…
JMJ: “That's right, and we also had drones appearing from the background as part of the stage design - not as decor, but part of a matrix that was totally synchronised to the beat and music. I also met with an extraordinary company called KVANT, which is specialises in lasers. They are from Bratislava, so it was nice to work with some local technicians who were in charge of the laser projections onto buildings.”
MR: You also incorporated some video from Edward Snowden for the track Exit, which refers to privacy and how information is digitally stored. With the rise of AI, is that an even bigger concern for you now?
JMJ: “I did this track in collaboration with Edward because I was really quite impressed by his courage and consider him a modern hero. He made me think of my mum who was a great figure in the French Resistance and always taught me that each time you have a regime or government ideology that could potentially affect the community, you have to stand up against it.
“I also knew that Edward was quite a fan of electronic music, so I went to Moscow to talk, record and film him for this track. He came up with the title Exit for obvious reasons and I thought it was quite relevant to play this track in Bratislava when talking about the relationship between technology and the effect it has on us as citizens.”
MR: Some years ago you were in discussion with Sony CSL about developing AI-driven algorithmic software. Did that lead anywhere?
JMJ: “I’m still in contact with Sony CSL, but I must say that there’s still a lot of work to do regarding AI and music in terms of copyright and authors’ rights. It's totally understandable that the industry considers AI, or the use of algorithms, as a potential threat, but I think it would be a big mistake to reduce the relationship to one legal point of view.
“Of course, we must set up rules because the system is being used to harvest our content and without that an algorithm would have to harvest the dictionary, so the value of these companies is entirely dependent on our content.”
MR: Can you foresee a system that forms a more equitable relationship between musicians and those who seek to monetise harvested content?
JMJ: “I think the classic system of copyrights and author rights cannot be applied to the new relationship we will have with AI. For once, we should accept that the artistic and creative community should have a chunk of the digital cake.
"We are commercial partners and should stop begging for rights and asking these companies for a royalty system because it doesn't work with the algorithm philosophy. Today’s AI algorithms don't even know what they’re harvesting.
“All these young developers love movies and music, so they are not against us, but if we want to create a deal we have to talk the same language. We should also stop taking the pseudo libertarian approach of saying rules are affecting and weakening freedom when it's exactly the reverse. We should set up rules, as it’s only because we have a driving license that we can drive safely on the road. Having said that, AI is a fantastic tool - although I used to say that it should really stand for ‘augmented imagination’ rather than ‘artificial intelligence’.”
MR: Did you encounter any AI-related copyright issues in your early dealings with Sony CSL?
JMJ: “When I started to work with Sony CSL, I was facing mathematicians and pure scientists and was a little bit disappointed at the beginning talking to people who ignored some very important elements in music; groove and uncertainty. You can't reduce music composition to numbers - it goes beyond that. I'm not talking about Sony CSL in particular, but that’s still an issue today.
“For my next project, I'm preparing to work with an iPhone to try to create dialogue with an algorithm that would allow me to approach it in an intuitive and creative way. At the moment, I'm using it more from a visual point of view, but it's not something that the AI created - I created everything using AI, and the result is what I wanted to have, so I’m using the same approach to AI as I would a synthesizer."
MR: In 100 years’ time, do you think people will be watching an AI Jean-Michel Jarre performing ‘live’ on stage?
JMJ: “I’m not ready yet for cryogenics, but I see what you mean. As I said, we’re analogue animals made of flesh and blood and AI is going to be a fantastic tool, but it's still about what can be done in the Western world with 12 notes. What makes Miles Davis, Billie Eilish or Mozart unique is the fact that the music is coming from them, which is a specificity that cannot be replaced by AI.
“We should never forget that AI is harvesting the past and detecting styles, but I’m sure that it’s going to generate the new bepop, rock and roll, techno, and new genres and art forms, and that’s quite exciting.”
Jean-Michel Jarre - Live in Bratislava is out now via Sony Music Entertainment. For more information, click here.
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