A 52-minute score for Sebastião Salgado’s immersive exhibition on the Brazilian Amazon.
The story behind Amazônia
JMJ created the music to the vision of Sebastião Salgado
Jean-Michel Jarre has composed and recorded a 52-minute musical score for ‘Amazônia’, a project by award-winning photographer and filmmaker Sebastião Salgado, for the Philharmonie de Paris. The exhibition launched on 7 April and later travelled to South America, Rome and London.
‘Amazônia’ is an immersive exhibition focussing on the Brazilian Amazon, featuring more than 200 photographs and other media by Salgado. He travelled the region for six years, capturing the forest, the rivers, the mountains and the people who live there — most of the work seen publicly for the first time. At its heart is an invitation to see, hear and think about the future of biodiversity and the place of humans in the living world.
Jarre’s accompanying sound-creation is a symphonic world that engulfs visitors in the sounds of the forest. Blending electronic and orchestral instruments with real-life natural sounds, the score was also recorded in binaural audio for a truly immersive experience.
The score
In his own words
I wanted to avoid the ethnomusicological approach, or creating background music. So I conceived a sort of toolbox containing musical elements — orchestral and electronic — intended to recreate or evoke the timbre of natural sounds, to which I added sounds from the environment, and finally ethnic sources (voices, songs, and instruments) from the sound archives of the Ethnography Museum of Geneva (MEG).
I approached the Amazon with respect, in a poetic and impressionistic way. I chose the vocal and sound elements in their evocative dimension, rather than trying to be faithful to a particular ethnic group.
It seemed interesting to me to fantasise the forest. It carries with it a powerful imagination; for both Westerners and Amerindians. This music also evokes a form of nomadism, as if sounds appear and disappear during a migration.
It was necessary to go back to the principles of orchestration of the sounds of nature, to work from sounds which follow one another randomly, but which can compose a harmony or a dissonance. And as in any symphony, the work has moments of clarity or tension.
Formats
Binaural Sound & 5.1 Sound
The CD and vinyl come with an access code to download the Binaural Sound and 5.1 Sound.
The Binaural Sound is also available to stream and download digitally on all streaming platforms.