Oxymore

Pierre Henry, a pioneer of concrete and electronic music, left a series of sounds to Jean-Michel Jarre during his lifetime, with the mutual desire to create a new work. Five years later, in 2022, Jean-Michel Jarre refers to the deceased composer with a work that highlights the common philosophy of two artists who have everything in common in their constant search for technology in the service of music, and yet who differ in the fundamental process of composition, opposing concrete and abstract music.
In a musical journey where Pierre Henry's sounds dialogue with Jean-Michel Jarre's new composition in a game of mirrors, the creator of Oxygène finds his inverted doppelgänger in Oxymore, opening a vortex that sucks us into an anachronistic back-and-forth where analog and digital find a common playground. Not limited to a recorded musical composition, Oxymore was conceived as an immersive work in the innovation studios of Radio France in multichannel and binaural version presented as a preview of the album, due to launch in October 2022.
The concert was also broadcast on VRChat in real time inside Oxyville, a virtual city created by Jean-Michel Jarre and VRrOOm as an outpost of a metaverse under construction. Between constructivism and impressionism, Oxymore takes the audience on an unexpected acoustic journey, and creates a bridge between Radio France's historical sound roots and its most recent innovations. The work establishes a link between the classical/contemporary music department and the contemporary music sector, symbolically marking the launch of the “Jarre Academy of Sound” initiated by the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, and the composer.