Amazônia

Amazônia is Jean-Michel Jarre's 21st studio album, written as the soundtrack to an exhibition rather than as a record in its own right.

Sebastião Salgado's Amazônia — more than 200 photographs and other media documenting the Brazilian Amazon and its Indigenous peoples — ran at the Philharmonie de Paris from May to October 2021, and Jarre's score ran with it: 52 minutes built to surround visitors in the sound of the forest as they moved through the images.

The palette blends electronic and orchestral instruments with field recordings of the forest itself. Jarre drew on the collection of the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva for source material. The whole thing was recorded in binaural, so on headphones the sound arrives from every direction rather than from two speakers in front of you — the exhibition's spatial experience, made portable.

Released 9 April 2021. Available as a standard stereo version on CD and LP, with binaural and 5.1 surround versions as digital downloads. A portion of revenues is directed back to the Indigenous communities where the recordings were made.