He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and is known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, accompanied by vast laser displays, large projections and fireworks.

From an early age, he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including street performers, jazz musicians and the artist Pierre Soulages.

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.

[7] From his vantage point high above the pavement, the young Jarre was able to observe street performers at work, an experience he later cited as proving influential on his art.

[9] A more general interest in musical instruments was sparked by his discovery at the Saint-Ouen flea market, where his mother sold antiques, of a Boris Vian trumpet violin.

He often accompanied his mother to Le Chat Qui Pêche (The Fishing Cat), a Paris jazz club run by one of her friends from her resistance years, where saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, and trumpet players Don Cherry and Chet Baker were regular performers.

[11]As a young man Jarre earned money by selling his paintings, exhibiting some of his works at the Lyon Gallery – L'Œil écoute, and by playing in a band called Mystère IV.

[12] Jarre was introduced to the Moog modular synthesizer and spent time working at the studio of influential German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne.

[12] Jarre initially was turned down by several record companies, until Jean-Michel decided to meet with Francis Dreyfus, the head of the Disques Motors label, to see if he could release the album, to which he accepted.

[31][44] Between February and May 1983, Jarre recorded a single LP copy of an album entitled Musique pour Supermarché (English: Music for Supermarkets) whose objective was to be the soundtrack of a show called Orrimbe, to later be auctioned with the master tapes and plates destroyed.

The album was based around multiple fragments of human voices pronouncing words and speeches in different languages from all over the world, recorded digitally by Jarre and then played back and edited on the Fairlight CMI.

[4] Jarre worked with several Houston-based astronauts, including Bruce McCandless II and Ronald McNair, an accomplished musician who was to have played the saxophone on "Rendez-Vous VI", recorded in the weightless environment of space.

[4]About 2,000 projectors shone images onto buildings and giant screens up to 1,200 feet (370 m) high, transforming the city's skyscrapers into spectacular backdrops for an elaborate display of fireworks and lasers.

[4] In 1988, Jarre released his ninth studio album Revolutions, and in same year, a concert called Destination Docklands was planned for September, to be held at the Royal Victoria Dock in east London.

Early in 1988 Jarre met with local officials and members of the community,[51] but Newham Borough Council delayed their decision until 12 September, the month in which the show was due to take place.

[51] Along with thousands in the surrounding streets and parks, 200,000 people watched Jarre and guests such as guitarist Hank Marvin perform in less than ideal conditions.

[48] On Bastille Day he performed a concert at La Défense in Paris, attended by a record-breaking audience of about two million people, again beating his earlier world record.

[4] About two years later he released Chronologie, an album that features Jarre's traditional collection of instruments like the ARP 2600 and Minimoog, as well as newer synthesisers such as the Roland JD-800 and the Kurzweil K2000.

[59] The following December, he created the website "A Space for Tolerance", which featured music from En Attendant Cousteau, played while the user browsed a variety of "visual worlds".

[71] The album consists of two long-form pieces: "Bonjour Hello", is a 25 minute audio collage of sounds with voices saying short sentences in French, English and Danish.

[73] On 7 September 2002, Jarre held a very wet and muddy concert at the Gammel Vrå Enge [da] near the city of Aalborg in Denmark, with 40,000 spectators (including 5,000 VIPs).

[74][75] By no fault of Jarre, due to 22 millimeters of rain and lack of proper preparation for and execution of the event, it took several hours for all people to be able to leave the area, and many cars were stuck until the next day.

[75] A concert in September of that same year at a wind farm near Aalborg in Denmark proved problematic when 22 mm of rain fell on the venue, causing long delays for spectators.

[83] In his role of UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Jarre performed a concert named Water for Life in Morocco, on 16 December 2006, to celebrate the United Nations Year of Desertification in the world.

[99] Other collaborations on the album include Tangerine Dream for Zero Gravity; Armin van Buuren for "Stardust",[100] John Carpenter for "A Question of Blood",[101] Little Boots for If..!

[106] The transmedia is composed of a web documentary using Zoolook's creative process involving 4 international artists (Simonne Jones, Mikael Seifu, Daedelus and Luke Vibert);[107] a 52' documentary film directed by Beryl Koltz broadcast in September 2015 on ARTE (with the participation of Chassol, Matthew Herbert, Blixa Bargeld, Jean-Michel Jarre, Matmos, Kiz, Joseph Bertolozzi); and finally a participatory tribute music album whose tracks were chosen by Jean-Michel Jarre, entitled Zoolook Revisited.

[125] The 2018 leg of the tour continued in Canada and the United States during April, including the presentation of the Electronica show with a reduced track list in the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, ending with a one-off concert at Riyadh to celebrate the 88th Saudi National Day (23 September).

[126] In September 2018, a studio compilation album entitled Planet Jarre – 50 Years of Music, consisting of forty-one songs in "four quite different styles of composition", was released.

This application contains morphing graphics created by an algorithm developed by Alexis André of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, and music generated from 7 hours of recorded material by Jarre.

On 21 June 2021, Jarre was awarded Commander to the Legion of Honour by French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée presidential palace in Paris.