Jarre

Putting together Jarre's best tracks over 12 albums, Images is a superb collection of his greatest electronic feats and atmospheric pieces, displaying his supreme instrumental prowess…

In 1977, Sir Lew Grade and acclaimed Italian director Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo And Juliet, the wonderful Mel Gibson Hamlet) were in the midst of finishing their sprawling six-hour miniseries about the life of Christ when they turned to veteran composer Maurice Jarre for the musical chores. While Jarre apparently had his reservations about doing work for television, in this case his fears turned out to be unjustified. With an all-star cast, exotic locations that spanned the globe, and most importantly the type of budget that could afford the kind of epic score Jarre had in mind, many still consider Jesus Of Nazareth to be one of the definitive filmic depictions of the J-man to date. Quite a feat, considering that the Guinness Book Of World Records calls Jesus the single most portrayed character in the history of cinema.

The Concerts in China is a live album by Jean Michel Jarre, recorded in 1981 and released in 1982 on Disques Dreyfus. It was recorded during Jarre's Concerts in China tour of Autumn 1981, which consisted of five Beijing and Shanghai concerts in China; this was the first time a Western pop artist performed in China after the Cultural Revolution. The album is a balance of previously released tracks by Jarre, new compositions inspired by Chinese culture, and one rearranged traditional Chinese track ("Fishing Junks at Sunset"). The album consists mainly of live material, plus ambient sound recordings and one new studio track "Souvenir of China". Other new compositions recorded live include "Night in Shanghai", "Laser Harp", "Arpegiator" and "Orient Express". "Fishing Junks at Sunset" is a new arrangement of a very old traditional Chinese song known as the "Fisherman's Chant at Dusk", which was performed and recorded with The Peking Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra and is often wrongly attributed as being composed by Jean Michel Jarre, misled by the album inlay.

Jean-Michel Jarre has announced the release of ‘, the definitive audio-visual record of his historic open-air concert-event ‘Bridge From The Future’, performed on May 12, 2024 in Slovakia. The release lands worldwide on September 5, 2025 and is available to pre-order now, including a limited Ultimate Collector’s Box Set.

One might have expected that Silva Screen Records, here operating through the subsidiary label Silva Classics, would be more interested in Jean Michel Jarre's father Maurice Jarre than in the younger musician. After all, Reynold da Silva's record company specializes in making new recordings of music from film scores, and it's Maurice Jarre who's the famous screen composer, while Jean Michel Jarre is the synthesizer player who stages spectacular concerts and sells records in the millions with his new age music. But that's the point: this is The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre, an attempt to take his music and play it as though it had been written like his father's. As usual, Silva employs the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, with the Crouch End Festival Chorus along to provide the "ah" sounds as appropriate…