This Page Last Updated
September 21st 2003

AERO : A Tribute to the Wind

Concert Date: Saturday 7th September 2002
Location: Gammel Vrå Enge Windmill Park, Near Aalborg, Denmark
Visitors: 35,000+
Cost of project: approx. 20 Million Danish Kroner
Ticket costs: 200 DKK (Standard), 750 DKK (Show Buffet), 1895 DKK (VIP)
Length of concert: 2 hours approx.
Broadcasts: TV2 Highlights (1 hour edit), TV2 Zulu (full concert)
DVD/Video release : N/A

"Mudder Pludder!" stated the newspaper headlines on Sunday 8th September 2002. 'AERO - A Celebration of the Wind' was, for what it's worth, Jean Michel Jarre's most (to put it in his own words) "Apocalyptic" concert to date (in terms of weather that is).

It would be very easy to talk about the hectic nature of the aftermath that ensued after the concert had ended, but let's not do that, and let's talk about the concert itself and the planning stages that were involved.

It was announced during the first half of August 2001 that Jean Michel was in talks for a proposed concert in Denmark, but it wasn't until September when details finally emerged of Jean Michel's plans for the concert. "The wind will have the lead role, not only as an energy form, but also as a carrier of sounds, images, messages and dreams. The wind carries birds, pollen - but also smoke and pollution, the wind brings us into contact with all the worst and all the best - the choice is ours" stated Jean Michel during the first press conference on his proposal for the concert.

The initial idea - to perform a concert at Gammel Vrå Enge Windmill Park, in front of the park's 15 Windmills, using the wind as the power source and basis for the design - was a very sound, and environmentally pleasing idea, especially with the fact that it was planned that the Windmills would provide the power necessary for the concert. The initial idea for the design of the concert was to have a row of 'monitors' (projection screens), reaching 45 meters in height, in the shape of kites, parachutes, wind sails, and wind socks (like those used in airports).

Jean Michel also wanted to make use of Danish graphical designers, and also hoped to get Lars von Trier (the famous Danish Movie Director) to create a special video for the concert. He even wished to enlist the help of Danish school children to create drawings - on the theme of the wind - which would be integrated into the projections during the show (much in the same way as Concert for Tolerance in 1995). Aswell as this, AERO was also planned to involve 2 concerts, with 60,000 fans attending each performance. All of this was not to be as expected though.

With only 1/3 of funding raised from the initial sponsors after a couple of months, and opposition to the concert going ahead from local government politicians, things were not looking good. Campaigns to raise the required funding for the concert went ahead, but over the months that ensued, many sponsors backed out, leading to the required funding not being met when the deadline for funding finally arrived.

There were also concerns over the safety and ergonomics of the original concept stage design. This was mainly due to the fact that it would not have been safe enough to construct a selection of sails to be used as projection screens - it was not possible to guarantee that the safety harnesses holding the sails in place would not un-hook themselves and fly away / fall down onto the audience if high speed winds were to hit them.

With many problems encountered, and more facing them, it was required that Jean Michel and his team to come up with something more suitable and cost-effective.

So, with a new stage idea onboard, and the details of how the concert will be conceived, preparations eventually went underway to make Jean Michel's vision become a reality.

The new stage design reflected Jarre's original concept from the Rendez-vous in Space 2001 concert in Okinawa with The ViZitors, where the stage consisted of many television screens, and all the keyboards laid out in a line (if you look at the photos from the Okinawa concert, you will see the resemblance). This design, although being on a smaller scale, gave the ability to use a huge 45ft projection screen, aswell as plenty of space for use of various different aspects onstage, such as a full choir, orchestra, and the presence of the now drafted-in Danish percussion group, Safri Duo (who proceeded to provide percussions and effects on AERO and Rendez-Vous 4 during the concert).

Due to time and money constraints though, it seems, there were no new (as such) projections used during the concert, and so opting to re-use classic projection used during past concerts, such as from Europe in Concert, and Akropolis the year before. The only new projections used were during Oxygene 2, Millions of Stars, and Light My Sky. During other tracks where no projections were used, a nice colourful backdrop of some excellent use of lighting, especially during tracks such as Chronologie 6 for example. Because of the minimal use of projections, on this occasion for a Jarre concert, the extra use of lighting during the concert harked back to 1997 during the Oxygene Tour concert, and as such, the lighting effects were very good. Well done to SeeLite for their work. :-)

During the week leading up to the concert on the Saturday night, the erection of the stage went smoothly, with no disconcerting problems. The full Dress Rehearsals on the Friday night went according to plan, with some nice warm weather, and a fair amount of fans being allowed access to the concert site to watch the "pre-concert" concert, so long as they showed their purchased tickets to the Stewards to gain entry. We may add though that this came as a slight problem to Jarre UK, and nearly missed the start of the Rehearsals (mainly due to not knowing we had to have our tickets on ourselves). Thankfully, due to a certain head person over in Camp Jarre, everything was sorted out, and a great night was had by all. :-)

The Rehearsals contained many features during the performance that, unfortunately due to the weather problems (more on this later), were not used during the Saturday night performance. These included on-stage "wind sails" during tracks such as Oxygene 12. You can see some of these briefly in some of the photos in this article at the bottom on the page.

When Saturday came, everyone were buzzing with excitement with being treated to a full day's entertainment, and with high expectations of some nice weather (even though forecasts said otherwise). Unfortunately though, the forecasts were to be true... and during the course of most of the afternoon, and early evening, the heavens opened and we were all treated to what could easily be described as 'Destination Docklands 2' with much rain falling, and not letting up hardly until closer to the time before the concert was to start. Now, rain would hardly stop an outdoor concert, but since this was a major rainfall, and there were not adequate facilities to cope with so much rain (especially within the concert arena where the audience were occupied), what was normally a nice, fairly standard, grass covered field, turned into what could only be described as a swamp. Almost knee-high levels of water in places, and lots (and lots, and lots, etc) of MUD. During daylight, this would not normally be a problem, and it wasn't for most of the day. The problems arose when the sky darkened and night befell onto us all.

To cut a long, enduring, endurance test of a story short, the concert was allowed to go ahead as planned - albeit minus the onstage "wind sails". A large plastic and metal 'roof' had been constructed over the top of the main onstage platform during the day, luckily before the rain started, which protected Jean Michel's keyboards and other equipment. This unfortunately obstructed some of the big screen projections, and which can be seen also in the photos below. After the concert had finished, more problems occurred from within the car parks with cars getting stuck within the mud that had accumulated, and many people not being able to exit the concert site until early hours of the morning, with some people still stuck there until past 6am in the morning! This of course attracted a lot of attention from the local and national press, and much coverage of the problems occurred after the concert being broadcast on TV and in the Newspapers. A lot of problems were to be attracted on towards Jean Michel, and the concert organisers, Muskelvindfonden. A very detailed Police report of the situation, with some nice pics and plans of the concert site can be found here. (right-click link, and select "Save Target As")

As for the music, what was performed was a fairly nice surprise with a lot of Jean Michel's classic tracks being reworked (and in some cases, remixed). AERO Introduction, aswell as the Flute introductions and 'AERO' were new tracks made specially for the concert, while classic tracks like Oxygene 4 and Magnetic Fields 1 were brought up to date with added basslines and a more 'funky' approach to the music, making them more nightclub orientated. A refreshing change from performing the classic tracks in their original form.

Report by Robin Hosgood

The Jarre UK Team @ AERO were as follows:

Duncan 'Dunkie' Walls (principle news editor and photographer)
Robin Hosgood (Concert reporter and photographer)
Howard 'Howie' Farrar (additional photograpy, "Chauffer" and support)
Claus Lundholm (additional photography and moral support)


© 2002 Julien Prat (with kind permission) - http://julien.prat.free.fr

1: Jean Michel Jarre - Keyboards, Synthesizers and Percussion
2: Francis Rimbert - Keyboards, Synthesizers and Percussion
3: Coro Misto & Klarup Pigekor Girl Choirs
4: The Symphonic Orchestra of Aalborg
4: Safri Duo - Percussions on 'AERO' & 'Rendez-vous 4'

Original Concept Design:



Stage Preperations / Testing:



Rehearsals:



Main Concert Site (Daytime):



Main Concert (Evening):



AERO Photo Gallery (Robin Hosgood)



AERO Photo Gallery (Duncan Walls)



Howie's Fan Meeting Gallery

Howie's Concert Site Visit Gallery

Howie's AERO Rehearsals Gallery

Howie's Concert Day / Main Concert Gallery

AERO Press Photo Gallery



AERO NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

5th September:



7th September:



9th September:



LINKS TO OTHER AERO-RELATED SITES

AERO Local Police Report (8mb file (PDF format) requires Adobe Acrobat)

NEG Micon's AERO site (requires Macromedia Flash)

NEG Micon December newsletter (PDF format, page 12)

Jarre.net's AERO report

Bignath's AERO Videos

Bignath's AERO Photo Collection

(R)evolution UK's AERO articles

Kidda.net's AERO Photos

Baghuset Press Photos

GioVi's AERO Photos (see Jarre UK in DSC00457.jpg)

Anders Thorsen Holm's AERO Photos

Northlander's AERO photos

Jarre Photobase photos

ojorus.net's AERO photos (plus others)

Ekstra Bladet news article

Infopaq Nyheder news articles

TV2 Aalborg video report (broadband)

More TV2 Aalborg video reports (broadband)

TV2 Report (broadband - Real Media RAM video)

Aftenposten article (Norway)

Sydsvenskan article (Sweden)

Soundcheck.dk's AERO article

Gaffa.dk's AERO article

René Munk Thalund's AERO review for Gaffa.dk

BBC News Online article

B.T. (danish newspaper) (various articles and photos)

Original concept artwork (c)2002 Mark Fisher

AERO concert photos (unless otherwise stated or not) (c) 2002 Robin Hosgood, Duncan Walls, Howard Farrar, Mark Withall, Hans Ravn, Henrik Nielsen, Dennis Kolkman, Jens Peder Weibrecht, Marco Blom, Jannick Clausen, Allan Toft, Alex Bach Kristensen, Michael Bo Rasmussen & Lars Horn (Baghuset).

If you are not credited here, please email us with your details and we will be happy to credit you for your photo(s) - if you do not wish to be credited, we will gladly remove any photo if requested.

Web-Master: Duncan M G Walls 'Dunkie' (ICQ: 114076586)
Assistant Web-Master: Robin Hosgood (ICQ: 29538207)

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Tracklist

Countdown
AERO Introduction
Oxygene 4
Chronologie 6
Flute Introduction
Oxygene 2
Equinoxe 4
Magnetic Fields 2
Millions of Stars
Equinoxe 7
Theremin Introduction
Magnetic Fields 1
Oxygene 8
Flute Introduction
Souvenir of China
Light My Sky
Oxygene 12
Rendez-vous 2
AERO
Rendez-vous 4
Oxygene 13