Jean-Michel Jarre announces New Years Eve virtual live show

From Loudersound.

French virtuoso prog star Jean-Michel Jarre has announced plans to host a spectacular New Year’s Eve virtual concert that will make it appear that he’s performing inside a virtual Notre Dame.

Jarre will perform live from a studio near the cathedral in Paris, while his avatar plays inside a virtual Notre-Dame. The 45-minute concert that Jarre will perform will be composed of tracks from his recent Grammy-nominated album Electronica, as well as new reworked versions of his classics, Oxygène and Equinoxe.

“Virtual reality is to the performing arts today what cinema was to the theatre in its early days, a kind of curiosity,“ says Jarre. “I believe that VR will become tomorrow, a mode of expression in its own right.”

Welcome To The Other Side, set for Thursday, December 31, is a one-off exclusive, worldwide and open-to-all, free concert experience whose ambition, beyond celebrating the New Year in a futuristic and festive way, is to send a message of hope for 2021: a digital and virtual invitation from Paris, the City of Light, vibrant metropole of the Arts & of Culture and home to the most famous cathedral in the world. Notre-Dame has a unique place in the collective imagination, it is a symbol of the strength and of World Heritage that binds us together.

The live stream experience on December 31 will be produced as a cutting-edge simultaneously-mixed-media creation. Welcome to other side of reality, welcome into the New Year, welcome to your own personal celebration, welcome to a global party, all via your own chosen dimension:

– In total immersion on the social VR platform VRchat, accessible either simply via PC, or in virtual reality for the audience equipped with VR headsets

– Live-streaming on Jarre’s & other social media platforms via any PC or Mac, smartphone or tablet

– Live audio broadcast on Radio France’s France Inter, French public radio

– Live TV broadcast by French BFM Paris news channel

Welcome To The Other Side takes place on December 31 at 11.25PM CET/10.25PM GMT/2.25PM PST.

More information.