Jean-Michel Jarre announces Xmas day Versailles 400 concert event

(Image credit: EDDA)

French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre has announced a unique hybrid artistic creation to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Château de Versailles.

Versailles 400 will take place in the famous Hall of Mirrors at the Château de Versailles on December 25 and will celebrate contemporary French innovation as well as linking the past to the future. The event takes place in a location that was at the origin of an incredible artistic revolution, and to pay tribute to the great royal festivities that have marked the history and made the world-famous Château de Versailles, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"Versailles 400 is a hybrid concert and visual creation broadcast live from one of the world's most beautiful locations, as well as in virtual reality in the metaverse," says Jarre. "I hope the event will help promote our creative savoir faire and bring the world of French immersive creation to the forefront of collective culture."

Jarre will perform this concert-show simultaneously in front of a real audience in the Hall of Mirrors, and in the metaverse, thanks to his avatar, in the centre of a futuristic Hall of Mirrors with a virtual audience connected in VR or on tablets and smartphones.

The show will be filmed at the Château de Versailles, and broadcast on French (Groupe M6-W9) and international TV channels via Eurovision Services/UER, on radio (RTL), online via digital platforms (Jarre’s YouTube channel), and in virtual reality on the French VRROOM platform on December 25, Christmas Day.

In 2021 Jarre presented a virtual New Year's Eve show Welcome To The Other Side, which was set in a 'virtual' Notre Dame cathedral. The live show combined life-like concert visuals in VR with a live studio performance.

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Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.