Jean Michel Jarre (born Jean-Michel André Jarre; 24 August 1948) 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 grandparents, and trained on the piano. From an early age he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.
His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène. Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies. Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979 Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken three times. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world. Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, and he is now perhaps as well known as a performer as well as a musician.
As of 2004 Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums. He was the first Western musician officially invited to perform in the People's Republic of China, and holds the world record for the largest-ever audience at an outdoor event.
Colin Ivor Moulding (born 17 August 1955, Swindon, Wiltshire, England) is a bassist, songwriter and vocalist. He is a founding member of the band XTC. Though less prolific than bandmate Andy Partridge, Moulding wrote many of the group's most popular songs, including their first three UK hit singles: "Life Begins At The Hop", "Making Plans For Nigel", and "Generals and Majors". "Making Plans For Nigel" was also a Top 20 hit in Canada, and "Generals and Majors" was the band's first U.S. chart entry, peaking at #104 in 1980. Moulding's songs tended to differ from those of Partridge, in some cases having more political overtones.
David Van Cortlandt Crosby (born August 14, 1941) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds; Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN, who are sometimes joined by Neil Young as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young [CSNY]); and CPR.
Crosby has been depicted as emblematic of the counterculture.
Musically, he wrote or co-wrote Lady Friend, Why, and Eight Miles High with the Byrds and Guinnevere, Wooden Ships, Shadow Captain, and In My Dreams with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He wrote Almost Cut My Hair, and the title track Déjà Vu for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 1970 debut. He is known for his use of alternate tuning, and jazz influence (notably on Eight Miles High, Wooden Ships, Déjà Vu and with his group CPR).
Crosby has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once for his work in The Byrds and once for his work with CSN.
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American comedian, actor, musician, writer, and producer.
Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor, as well as an author, playwright, pianist and banjo player, eventually earning him an Emmy, Grammy and American Comedy awards, among other honors.
In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics. He was awarded an honorary Oscar at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards in 2013.
While he has played banjo since an early age, and included music in his comedy routines from the beginning of his professional career, he has increasingly dedicated his career to music in the past decade and a half; acting less and spending much of his professional life playing banjo, recording and touring with various bluegrass acts, including Earl Scruggs, with whom he won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2002. He released his first solo music album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, in 2009, for which he won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, Latin jazz and jazz fusion. Metheny has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards. He is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist Mike Metheny.
Continuing the tradition of jazz guitarists borrowing tones and techniques from their rock counterparts, Metheny has made his own additions to the jazz guitar tone palette.
Six-string electric
Metheny's tone, which has evolved over the years, involves using the natural full-frequency response of his hollow-body guitar, combined with high-midrange settings on his amplifier to create a smooth, sustaining lead sound that is virtually devoid of piercing treble yet is able to cut through a dense mix. By using digital signal processing that involves digital delay/chorus and reverb, he has created a big, rich, and resonant instrumental voice.
Twelve-string electric
Metheny was an early proponent of the twelve-string guitar in jazz. During his 1975 tour with the Gary Burton "Quartet" (five people, including Metheny), he primarily played electric 12-string guitar against the 6-string work of resident guitarist Mick Goodrick.
Prior to Metheny, Pat Martino had used the electric twelve-string guitar on a studio album, Desperado, and John McLaughlin had used a double-neck electric guitar with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Ralph Towner was perhaps the first to use acoustic 12-string guitar extensively in Jazz ("The Moors", from Weather Report's I Sing the Body Electric, Columbia, 1972), and Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine made extensive use of acoustic twelve string in alternate tunings at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, later releasing some of the material on their 1976 Twin House album. Metheny used 12-string guitar on his debut album, Bright Size Life (1977), including alternate tuning on "Sirabhorn", and on later albums ("San Lorenzo, from Pat Metheny Group and Travels).
Guitar synthesizer
Metheny was also one of the first jazz guitarists to make heavy use of the Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer. While John Abercrombie and Bill Frisell also used Roland guitar synthesizers heavily in the 1980s, Metheny is the only one of the three who still uses the instrument regularly. Unlike many guitar synthesizer users, Metheny limits himself to a very small number of sounds. In interviews, he has argued that each of the timbres achievable through guitar synthesis should be treated as a separate instrument, and that he has tried to master each of these "instruments" instead of using the synthesizer for incidental color. One of the "patches" that he has often used is on Roland's JV-80 "Vintage Synth" expansion card, entitled titled "Pat's GR-300". Metheny was also heavily into the Synclavier Digital Audio Workstation made by New England Digital and brought it out on tour starting in the early 1980s.
42-string Pikasso guitar
Metheny plays a custom-made Pikasso I created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer on "Into the Dream" and on the albums Quartet, Imaginary Day, Jim Hall & Pat Metheny, Trio→Live, and the Speaking of Now Live and Imaginary Day DVDs. Metheny has also used the guitar in his guest appearances on other artists' albums.
Manzer has also made many acoustic guitars for Metheny, including a mini guitar, an acoustic sitar guitar, and the baritone guitar, which Metheny used for the recording of One Quiet Night. He also used the Pikasso on Metheny Mehldau Quartet, his second collaboration with pianist Mehldau and his trio sidemen Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard; the Pikasso is featured on Metheny's composition "The Sound of Water".
