The trip to London was great. Me and my wife had a great time. Off course for me the Jarre concert was the highlight of the trip. Directly after we arrived in the hotel we looked where the Royal Albert Hall was exactly. I turned out that we could walk it easily from our hotel. We decided to go there in the morning to make sure we wouldn't walk wrong. And that was a good decision afterwards, because that is exactly what we did. After we found it we went back to the hotel and took a little nap. We left early to go back again and ate at a nice Indian restaurant that we found on the way back.
Entering the hall is a very special moment. The ambiance there is really great. You can just feel the greatness that has happened there in the past. The hall was completely sold out we heard, but lots of people were late. So the concert started a little later than planned. Jean-Michel Jarre did a nice introduction before the concert and told that he was there not so long ago with Arthur C. Clarke who recently died. He said he would think about that during the concert. A scary moment was when during this presentation a iron chain fell down from the ceiling of the hall. Luckily it didn't hit Jean-Michel Jarre nor the equipment on stage. And what a nice stuff there was standing on that podium. Lots of vintage synthesizers :)
We had very nice seats as you can see from the picture on the left we were pretty close. Row 15 right in front of the podium. Great for a good stereo image :) You can also see some of the nice synthesizers that were on the podium like: Arp 2600, MemoryMoog, EMS Synthi, Jupiter 8, Moog Modular, Theremin, Eminent 310, Moog Liberation etc etc. Before they start the concert they even need to tune them last minute. Actually that tuning session sounded quite nice :) It is really a playing museum on stage.
The concert itself was great. However different from the other Jarre concerts I have seen. They were more about the show with lots of light, video and lasers etc. this concert was definitely focussed on the music itself. I really loved it and it was really live. Jarre made some mistakes on the solo's, but I don't mind. It was really cool to experience the greatness of the Oxygene album live. Something really cool was a big mirror array above the podium. You could look on top of the stage this way. Great idea.
After the concert we waited for a while in the hall in the hope that Jean-Michel Jarre would do an autograph session, but it looked after a while that this wasn't going to happen. So we went out to the stage door. There a pile of fans was waiting Jean-Michel Jarre up. A bit scary. We didn't want to stand between that and watched from a distance. I brought my CD with me because I really wanted to give it to him, because Jean-Michel Jarre is the reason I started making music. He is my big inspiration. Suddenly my wife recognized the assistant of Francis Rimbert coming out of the stage door. We met her (and Francis) at E-live in Eindhoven last year. We talked a while to her and she promised to get my CD to Jean-Michel Jarre. So he should have it now :) Now lets hope he will listen to it some day. If he ever does then it would be great to get some feedback from him. I can only hope for that. I gave Francis Rimbert a copy at E-live. I heard that he didn't have time to listen to it yet, but still has it. But they did look at my website already :) I was very happy to hear that. Well if something ever comes from this you will hear for sure.
All in all a great experience I wouldn't wanted have missed for anything. The rest of the trip was also very nice. We (me and my wife) had nice dinners, went to The Museum of Natural History, The Science Museum, Madame Tussuads, The London Aquarium and we saw a nice movie (10.000 BC).
On Tuesday the 26th of May I had a memorable meeting with Jean Michel Jarre and his band members after his concert in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. It was a very good concert in my opinion. One of the best I have seem from him. He played a lot of older material from Oxygene, Equinoxe etc. So great music, but the sound was very good too and I loved the laser show. Also it was obvious that he enjoyed himself. After the concert we went with a little group of people backstage and had to wait a while. We heard that he had a meeting with Armin van Buuren first who was sitting two rows behind me in the audience actually :)
When Jean Michel walked in his manager Fiona said right away that he had only 4 minutes, but luckily he stayed much longer than that. I think more like 30 minutes or so, though I didn't keep track of the time. I thanked him for the great concert and then I gave him my latest CD AtmoSphere as a present. He was very happy about this I could tell from his reaction and I asked him if he was actually going to listen to it and he promised me that he would do that for sure. So I really hope that he is going to keep this promise that fact alone would be a great honor for me.
Even nicer of course would be to hear back from him, but I don't expect much from that to be honest. But you never know :) When he does I'll surely let you know!! Here you see another picture of him holding my CD. Doesn't this look just great? :) Well after that we chatted about some other stuff, but I can't even remember what. I was in such a rush of adrenaline that I hope I didn't say anything stupid ;) Well it was a big honor for me to finally meet the man that put my to buying my first synthesizer and inspired me to start composing and producing my own music. It will be a long life memory for me for sure.
After that his band members walked in. Here you see a picture of me with Francis Rimbert. I met Francis before on E-live in Eindhoven when my first album was released there. Back then I did give him a copy as well. It was nice that he recognized me immediately and we had a nice chat. I gave him my AtmoSphere album as well and he asked if this was me new one. So he did remember the first one. I was happy to hear. I also heard that they had looked on my website at several occasions. Francis is really a very nice guy and has worked with Jean Michel Jarre for a long time.
Also Dominique Perrier was there. I never met him before. So I introduced myself by saying my name and pointing at the 'Synth.nl' on my T-shirt. His reaction was nice. He recognized it so he probably saw my website as well :) He is not a big talker but we did chat a bit. And I also gave him a CD. So I guess probably one of them will listen to it and hopefully tell the other ones to do the same :) Dominique Perrier has played with Jean Michel Jarre also from the beginning and is the guy that introduced him to the Eminent 310, a Dutch build organ that produces the famous phased string sound on the Oxygene album and is generally seen as the 'typical Jarre sound'.
Well here is another picture of me talking to Jean Michel Jarre to close this report. I had a really great time. And I would like to thank Remy Stroomer for organizing this meeting. Remy is a very good musician himself, but he also distributes the music from Francis Rimbert through his label AKH record. He got in touch with Jarre's Aero Management to set this up. I would also like to thank Michel Voorn from the Dutch Jarre Forum who also helped to organize this meeting. Thanks guys :) I have much more pictures and probably will get more since more people were there with camera's. So let me know if you would like to see the rest too. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly did :)
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