Jean-Michel Jarre – The Concerts In China 2xLP

Les Concerts en Chine (pronounced [le kɔ̃sɛʁ ɑ̃ ʃin], English title: The Concerts in China) is a live album by Jean-Michel Jarre, recorded in 1981 and released in 1982 on Disques Dreyfus. It was recorded during Jarre’s Concerts in China tour of Autumn 1981, which consisted of five Beijing and Shanghai concerts in China; this was the first time a Western pop artist performed in China after the Cultural Revolution.

The album is a balance of previously released tracks by Jarre, new compositions inspired by Chinese culture, and one rearranged traditional Chinese track, “Fishing Junks at Sunset” (“Jonques de pêcheurs au crépuscule”).

The album consists mainly of live material, plus ambient sound recordings and one new studio track “Souvenir of China”. Other new compositions recorded live include “Nuit à Shanghai”, “Harpe Laser”, “Arpégiateur” and “Orient Express”. “Jonques de pêcheurs au crépuscule” (“Fishing Junks at Sunset”) is a new arrangement of a very old traditional Chinese song known as the “Fisherman’s Chant at Dusk”, which was performed and recorded with The Peking Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra and is often wrongly attributed as being composed by Jean-Michel Jarre, misled by the album inlay.

Several of the tracks are misleadingly titled. The track labelled as “Magnetic Fields Part 1” is merely 30 seconds of table tennis sound effects and has no similarity with the studio track of the same name; in a 2018 interview with The Domino Elf, Jarre stated that he included the track as a joke. Meanwhile, “Band in the Rain” is actually part 8 of Equinoxe, “The Last Rhumba” is part 5 of Magnetic Fields, and “The Overture” is part 1 of Magnetic Fields slowed down.

The album was originally released as a double-disc LP, then as a double-disc CD. There was also a CD release in two separate volumes, with the cover color changed to blue (Vol. 1) and yellow (Vol. 2). In 1997, a one-disc remastered CD was released, made possible by reducing the total running time to 78:17 by reducing the gaps and audience noise between tracks. The remastering was done by Scott Hull at Masterdisk to the 96 kHz, 24 bit standard.

One of the album’s original tracks – “Arpégiateur” – was used in the soundtrack of the film 9½ Weeks as well as in several mid-1980s episodes of the American soap opera Santa Barbara.

The album reached No. 6 in the UK charts #1 in Portugal and #76 in Australia.