Jean Michel Jarre -Symphony Hall Birmingham,UK

 

This seemed to big an opportunity to miss despite the slightly inflated ticket prices (mine cost £70) which clearly scared away a number of punters given the empty seats around the place. I was keen though to see the French electronic keyboard wizard perform his seventies masterwork Oxygene with all the original keyboards.Mouth watering prospect for electronic music fans indeed.

 

The set up on stage was JMJ surrounded by his keyboards and three other keyboard players with smaller rigs lined up behind. The stage effects were limited to mainly well chosen ambient ligting plus some nice video images including the effective Earth/Skull image which rotated during Part 6 (no Penguins in part 4 though!) .Part 1 was much longer than the original album and perhaps a bit long but it works well going into a superb version of Part 2 (my favourite part of the album). I think they nailed this.Part 3 was beset by some technical problems (the only ones I noticed all night) but Part 4 was greeted with much applause (JMJarres greatest hit!) .After this there seemed to be at least a couple of new sections and Part 5 (or now 6?!) was even better than the album. Occasionally JMJ went in for some improvisation and even got out the old Keytar (much loved by Asia's Geoff Downes). The main performance ran into a couple of further parts from the follow up album going up to a wopping 1hour and twenty minutes! Following that JMJ did an encore of further extra Oxygene peices.

 

Overall an excellent show. Very good acoustics in a venue built for orchestral performances. I would have liked to have heard some music from other JMJ albums but maybe another time!

27th April

 

Yes, I'm not. It was really amazing.

The sound was very good, and visually it was fabulous. Althought it is not we commonly see in Jean Michelk Jarre's events outside, the ilumination was superbs, the lighs were perfect. The mirror that came down during the songs is a spectacular idea, and the projection during Oxygène VI (the world and the skull rotating and visiting its interior), and Nature, during Oxygène XII, it was almost a National Geographic Documentary, this time with music replacing the text. As and encore, Oxygène XIII. He was particularly aplaused during parts II, IV and VI, the pair ones.

A last mention to the comeback of the original analog keyboards, his vintage collection sounded amazingly.

It was just Oxygène (from the original, and the album of 1997, "Oxygène 7-13") on that night, but it was wonderful. Hope to see him again, outside.