1990-1999

Jarre’s tenth album Waiting for Cousteau is released in 1990. The undersea world of the famous oceanographer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, was the inspiration for this work.

On July 14th, Jean Michel Jarre creates and performs his most spectacular concert yet at Paris-La-Défense breaking his own live audience record by playing to a crowd of a staggering 2.5 million.

Images, a compilation of his most popular themes, is released in 1991 and he stages in 1992 three outdoor concerts at Lost City in South Africa.

1993 sees the release of Chronologie (Victoire de la Musique 1994), a voyage through the mechanism and Evolution of Time.

Jean Michel Jarre teams up with Swatch for his first ever tour: Europe in Concert. The sold-out tour brings him across sites from the Mont-Saint-Michel to Versailles Château and stadiums of the continent, from Wembley & Manchester Stadium, to Barcelona Olympic Stadium, Nep Stadium in Budapest… he is the sole French artist and one of the few internationals to play sold-out in these venues.

From Europe to Asia, in 1994 Jarre opens the new stadium in Hong Kong and brings some of his Chinese musical souvenirs back to the local community.

1995: Jarre is back in Paris, this time at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for his concert for Tolerance under the high patronage of UNESCO for which he is Ambassador for two years. Always faithful, his audience counts 1.2 million. The same year, he is decorated “Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur” by the French government.

In 1997 Jean Michel Jarre releases Oxygene 7-13; more than a sequel to the earlier album, Jarre had the idea to situate his early inspiration in new light, two decades later. The Oxygene Tour this same year sold out 25 dates across Europe.

Moscow invites Jarre to perform his largest ever concert as a statement of modernity, for the people who have followed his music over the years in difficult conditions. Nobody could have foreseen the impact of this invitation as the Russians came some 3.5 million-strong to show their welcome and share their joy, (Jarre’s third entry in the Guinness Book of Records). They were not disappointed as Jean Michel himself had reserved a sizeable surprise as he introduced his special guests, the astronauts from MIR on a live video link from space.

1998: Jarre collaborates with Brit group Apollo 440 to produce Rendez-vous 98, a single for the official World Cup football album. ITV, in the U.K., adopt the single for their broadcast of the competition. On July 14th, forty-eight hours after France’s world victory, Jean Michel Jarre stages a concert at the Eiffel Tower in Paris to celebrate his nations win and is joined on-stage by Apollo 440 and Japan’s superstar, Tetsuya ‘TK’ Komuro, amongst others.

On December 31st 1999, Jean Michel Jarre is commissioned by the Egyptian government to create and perform a historic Millennium concert, from sunset to sunrise, at the foot of the Great Pyramids near Cairo. He succeeds, during this concert, in catalysing a realm of talent and instruments from different ages and civilisations; traditional arabic, symphonic orchestra and electronic. An audience of 120 000 were privileged to share the event on-site, while over 2 billion followed the concert on world television and just over 2 million surfers connected for an average of 35 minutes on the world-wide web.