High on Oxygène: Jean-Michel Jarre en Monaco
Jean-Michel Jarre plays Monaco
After a few days of scandal and gossip – that spread, like an epidemic, from the boutiques of Monaco to the pages of Mail Online, Charlene – having tried to flee the country – said “I do” and the celebrations kicked off.
Rumours of absurd extravagance: €1500+ per-head dinners; tens of thousands of flowers, rivers of champagne etc. are doubtless true – arriving at the concert last night with a bottle of water in my bag, I was pleasantly surprised to find an open bar overlooking the port, serving champagne and just about everything else – absolument gratuit. So, the crowd was in very good spirits – literally.
Monaco — by Jean-Michel Jarre
Few performers could pull off this kind of concert with the same Gallic panache and vigour as Jarre; despite giving the concert “in the presence of” the royal couple, he was the star. Familiar pieces from Oxygène and Equinoxe dominated the set and moved a crowd that was somewhat ungenerous with its applause; within a half-hour, the fireworks were more spectacular than most grandes finalés, the velvet-blue sky filled with multi-coloured lights and smoke, music and explosions co-ordinated to heart-soaring effect, for two hours.
Jarre and his vintage (1970s) electronica are now older than many of the crowd (although the principality’s population is certainly old enough to revel in nostalgia), but have, like the composer, aged gracefully enough to command centre stage in the world’s most glamourous square mile.
Red and white – the principality’s colours
Grate that was one of the best concerts of Jean Michel Jarre’s & in fact one of the best concerts ever.
here is the Jarre album I have been wanting to hear:(from Wikipedia)”In 1983, he cetared the album Musique pour Supermarche9 (Music for Supermarkets), which had a print run of one single copy. The album was made expressly to voice Jarre’s distaste and disregard for the music business. Jarre destroyed all the master records from his studio work, allowed a radio station (Radio Luxembourg) to broadcast the album once and auctioned it, raising 10,000 for French artists. People recorded the album using their tape recorders while it was broadcast on the radio, so they can listen to that album, at a very poor quality though (the radio station was an AM station). Songs from this album were later reworked into future albums.”