The Concerts in China was a concert tour by Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel Jarre

Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...

, notable for marking the opening of post-Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

 China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 to live Western music, in 1981. Five concerts were held in the two biggest cities, for an estimated audience of 120,000 spectators, on October 21 and 22 in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

, and on October 26 through 28 in Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

.

The concerts were filmed and recorded for commercial releases. Due to the low quality of the recorded sound, the tracks were enhanced (overdubbed) for the release of the double album The Concerts in China

The Concerts in China

The Concerts in China is a live album by Jean Michel Jarre, recorded in 1981 and released in 1982 on Disques Dreyfus...

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An 80-minute documentary entitled 'Jean-Michel Jarre - China Concerts 1981' was made by producer/director Andrew Piddington for Central Television in the UK. It was shown once in 1982 on the ITV network in the UK, and did not receive a video release until 1989, when a VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

-video was released. The film was partially released by Shock DVD in Australia in 2008, but they were prevented from selling it by Jarre and record label Disques Dreyfus. The release was not from the master tapes, but from an 'off-air' Australian TV showing, so the quality was imperfect. The film has yet to receive an authorised, high-quality DVD release.

The concert featured the first use of a laser harp

Laser harp

A laser harp is an electronic musical instrument consisting of several laser beams to be blocked, in analogy with the plucking of the strings of a harp, in order to produce sounds. It was invented by Bernard Szajner and popularized by Jean Michel Jarre, and has been a high profile feature of...

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Set lists

First Concert in Beijing

• Oxygene 1
• Oxygene 2
• Equinoxe 8
• Fishing Junks at Sunset
• Magnetic Fields 1
• Magnetic Fields 2

Following Concerts

• The Overture
• Arpegiator
• Equinoxe 4
• Fishing Junks at Sunset
• Band in the Rain
• Equinoxe 7
• Orient Express
• Magnetic Fields 1
• Magnetic Fields 3
• Magnetic Fields 4
• Laser Harp
• Night in Shanghai
• The Last Rumba
• Magnetic Fields 2