Jean-Michel Jarre
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 Jean-Michel Jarre facts

• He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks
• Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents, and trained on the piano
• From an early age he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages
• He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales
• His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène
• Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies
• Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979 Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken three times
• More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world
• Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, and he is now perhaps as well known as a performer as he is as a musician
• As of 2004 Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums