Famous musician Jean-Michel Jarre to host a live VR concert on VRrOOm on Sunday

VR events are one of the big trends of virtual reality of the last 3 months. Because of the coronavirus, many physical events have been canceled and so people and companies are finding new ways to organize gatherings. Music has been one of the most impacted sectors by the COVID: most probably there won’t be real concerts until 2021 and that’s a real problem for all artists that want to express themselves.

But where there are problems, smart people see opportunities. And VR is a great opportunity for artists to not only organize concerts in a digital version (like they could do on Zoom) but to re-create the live event experience, offering special effects and artistic solutions that are impossible in real life.

Electronic French composer Jean-Michel Jarre, that is very famous in the electronic music environment, is going to seize this opportunity and host one of the first live concerts all in virtual reality. The peculiarity is that this event will be live, so not a pre-recorded session, and people will really be able to enjoy his music as if they were there with him. Virtual Reality, again, can help in defying distance, creating the opportunity to see your favorite artist very close to you, without requiring you to move from home.

The event will be called “Alone Together” exactly because it will let people meet virtually even if they are actually at home alone, maybe during the lockdown. Mr. Jarre will perform a 40min live show with even some brand new music for everyone, so it will really be like a new concert with some exclusive tracks for all the participants. (His fans are already getting crazy for this!)

The event will be held on Sunday, 21^st June on VRChat on occasion of the French “Fête de la Musique” (Music Day), thanks to the passion and the organization offered by VRrOOm and its founder Louis Cacciuttolo, that will host the concert in his world inside VRChat. Let me give you some more details on this amazing event from the press release:

Live from his studio, French musician Jean-Michel Jarre, via his Avatar, will perform live in a virtual stage and universe specially designed and produced by VRrOOm, hosted on VRChat platform and  simultaneously broadcast and accessible to everyone online via PC in video game mode, tablets and smartphones in 2D mode, or in total immersion using any tethered VR headset.

In addition to the digital broadcast, a “silent” broadcast of the virtual concert will be offered in city-center Paris, in the courtyard of the Palais Royal, to a selection of students from schools of the performing arts, training in sound and image, who will only need to bring their mobile phone and headphones to share the live performance on a big screen.

At the end of this simultaneous performance, the participants gathered in the courtyard of the Palais Royal will be able to chat live with Jean-Michel Jarre’s avatar, erasing even further the boundaries between the physical and the virtual worlds. To conclude, the avatar will open a virtual backstage door to which Jarre  will welcome the groups of students in person to his studio to share the behind of the scene of the evening . 

“Having performed concerts in extraordinary venues, virtual reality will now allow me to play in unimaginable spaces while remaining on a physical stage” says Jean Michel Jarre. “Virtual or augmented realities can be to the performing arts what the advent of cinema was to the theatre, an additional mode of expression made possible by new technologies at a given time,” predicts Jarre. 

As you can see, it is a hybrid event, a bit like the just organized HTC event that was held simultaneously in Shanghai and on ENGAGE. Probably this is the “Next Normal” about which Mister President was talking about: always more events bridging the gap between virtual and real, always more events using immersive realities to offer something that is not possible in real life, or to enhance the real-life experience.

I think that it’s an interesting experience, and I’m very proud to say that I’m part of the crazy team of people that are working on it. With me, and the other people at New Technology Walkers, there are the very talented Lapo Germasi and Victor Pukhov that already worked with me at our game HitMotion: Reloaded. There is Louis of VRrOOm, the mastermind behind this innovative performance, with whom I’m very pleased of collaborating since various months. He always shines of his passion for arts, creativity and live events.

There are many other professionals that are working on this concert and I’m happy to have discovered them in these weeks. Let me quote the release to not forget anyone:

For the occasion, Louis Cacciuttolo has gathered a team of innovative talents such as Pyaré, digital artist, author and director of Jet Lag, Patterns and SPACED OUT, award-winning interactive virtual reality experiences at Sundance or Montreal, and Vincent Masson, creator of graphic universes who signs opulent chromatic and architectural universes, and who created Morphosis and The Tide, among other spectacular works.

[…] Georgiy Molodtsov, producer of virtual reality content  and VR film festivals curator, Jean-Baptiste Friquet, a visual explorer, glitch artist and director for the digital live experiences.

Also involved in the project are tech startups such as SoWhen?, experiential designers responsible for using the technology to transcribe the real performance inside the virtual environment, innovation studio Atelier Daruma with the director Mathias Chelebourg, who is behind the multi-awarded VR experiences Alice, Jack, and Dr Who and worked on Jean-Michel Jarre’s real-time avatar animation stunt, Seekat, who is simultaneously broadcasting across various digital medias, MindOut the LBE VR specialist who will host the VR experience in its dedicated locations in Paris, Velizy 2 and Lille, and the social XR platform VRChat.

You may wonder three things at this point:

• How is organizing a virtual concert?
• How is working with JMJ?
• How can you join the concert?

Regarding the first part, well, it’s crazy. We’re preparing so many special FX to make your jaw to drop, that there is so much work to do and so little time to do it. The team mixes creative people with technologists and so comes the usual “fight” between what creatives would like to do and what actual technology can do now. There are lots of tests that must be done on VRChat to see what is feasible because in VRChat you can develop using Unity, but you can’t write C# scripts and this kills completely lots of possibilities for us developers. And then there is the need to coordinate people from Russia, Italy, France and lots of other countries and this is not always easy. So… it’s complicated, it’s stressful, but at the same time when you see what is being created, it is also very rewarding. I’m visiting the preview world every day and I’ve seen this project grow under my eyes and go from a flat Unity plane to a full stage with so many special FXs and… WOW. You should see it. I think the team is doing a great job in rewriting the history of live music concerts.

Regarding JMJ, I’m not working side-by-side with him every day, but I can say that he’s a true professional in what he does and it’s not a surprise he’s so successful. I admit I didn’t know him, but as soon as I pronounced his name to anyone in the electro-music world, everyone was in awe. He’s a living legend in the field.

Then… how to join the concert? You have to connect on June 21st at 9.15 pm CET (3.15 pm EST, 12.15 pm PST). You can use whatever device you have to join the experience, completely FOR FREE. If you have a PC, you can enter directly the VRChat world and enjoy the concert as if you were there in VR or on your desktop:

Download the VRChat app on Steam, Oculus, or Viveport (click on your store of choice), create your username, then go to the VRrOOm world either by typing VRROOM in the world search bar, or simply by clicking on this direct link: https://cutt.ly/7usECxv

Please note: the universe of Jean-Michel Jarre’s concert will be revealed at 8 p.m. on June 21, it will be necessary to refresh your connection at that time to participate in the event if you have already been in the VRrOOm world before this time.

If you are in mobility, don’t worry, you can follow the livestream!

Facebook/jeanmicheljarre – YouTube/jeanmicheljarre    

Also relayed on https://vrroom.buzz  

For more information on this super-event, you can visit https://vrroom.buzz or  https://jeanmicheljarre.com/. Or you can ask me, I would be very happy to answer all your questions if you ask them in the comments or on my social media channels!

On 21^st I will be there, do you want to listen to some cool music with me?

(Header image by VRrOOm)