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'Rendezvous Houston' provided a night to remember
French composer lit up city's night skyin a program that dazzled a cool million
By Mihir Zaveri | on October 29, 2016
Weeks before the concert, French composer Jean-Michel Jarre had been a virtual nobody in the city. 
Photo: Buster Dean, HC Staff
As night falls in Houston, a projection of the number zero flashes onto the exterior of the Heritage Plaza building in downtown. Hundreds of thousands cheer and clap in anticipation.
Out of the darkness, Jean-Michel Jarre steps onto a stage shrouded by smoke from machines.
Weeks earlier, the 37-year-old French composer had been a virtual nobody in the city. After this Saturday night in 1986, there would be few who wouldn't remember his name.
"Good evening!" Jarre says, peering through sunglasses at the crowd in front of him. "Yes? Is anybody out there?"
Cue the synthesizer, the pulse of a beat. Within seconds, downtown is ablaze in lasers, lights and fireworks.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Houston and of the Republic of Texas declaring independence, Jarre put on an audio-visual concert unlike anything the city, and even the country, had seen.
Called "Rendezvous Houston: A City in Concert", the multi-media show celebrated the city's ties to the space program. Jarre's light show also lit up the skyline up with images of astronauts and dancing multicolored lasers as more than 1 million people watched.
rendezvousWhoJean-Michel Jarre, then a 37-year-old French composer who had sold 25 million albums worldwide but had little name recognition in Houston.
What"Rendezvous Houston: A City in Concert" - an unprecedented concert and light show that combined Jarre's new album "Rendezvous," released just before the concert, with multicolored lasers, images projected onto downtown buildings some 1,200 feet high, spotlights that could be seen 50 miles away and a barrage of fireworks.
WhenApril 5, 1986, at 8:30 p.m., Jarre began his 90-minute concert. This is roughly three months after the space shuttle Challenger exploded and just as the impact of the 1980s oil slump was beginning to be felt.
WhereA stage, featuring a 45-foot-high reproduction of Houston's skyline, was set up on the west side of downtown, in front of the Meridien Hotel. A news release promoting the event said the viewing area would be "any location west of the downtown skyline which is unobstructed."
WhyJarre's concert was meant to commemorate Houston and Texas' 150th-year anniversaries as well as the 25th anniversary of NASA's Johnson Space Center. It was also the main event of that year's Houston Festival.
The remarkable display came at a moment of uncertainty for Houston, then in the throes of an oil slump that would ultimately cost 1 of 8 local workers their jobs. Earlier that year, the space shuttle Challenger had exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all seven crew members, including an astronaut who was to have played saxophone for Jarre's performance from space.
Maureen Lara-Fournier, who watched the show from a park nearby, said it was unforgettable.
"That was the best event I've ever been to in my life," she said. "We were 20 years old when that happened. It was stunning - a wonderful experience."
The same cannot be said of the early 1980s in Houston.
A devastating oil slump had begun in 1982, and by 1986 it was picking up even further.
Gone were the record crude prices that followed the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
From January to June 1986, crude prices fell 52 percent, to about $27 a barrel in 2016 dollars. Dancie Ware, who handled promotion for the event, said she and others initially could not fathom the potential concert. The public largely was unaware up until the final month.
But she and others raced in the final month before the concert to publicize the event on a shoestring budget, placing fliers in convenience stores and pitching newspapers and television not only on the awesomeness and scale of Jarre's idea, but on the city's emotional connections to the space program and its history.
"We were charged with creating the narrative," Ware said.
In the weeks leading up to April 5, 1986, news reports on the radio, on television and in newspapers turned Jarre into a familiar figure.
"This was going to be the biggest event in Houston history, things like that," Lara-Fournier said. "They were saying things like, they were expecting a million people and he's going to do this amazing laser show."
Jarre had been making a name for himself outside of the United States. A 1986 news release noted in 1979, upwards of 1 million people filled the Place de la Concorde in Paris for a similar "multi-media event and concert appearance."
In 1982, Jarre held concerts in the People's Republic of China in Peking and Shanghai - becoming the "first Western recording artist" to perform in the country, according to the news release. A half million people went to see him there.
Still, the release promoted the Houston performance as "the most magnificent multi-media concert ever staged."
People began showing up hours early. Police estimated that 300,000 people crammed into Sam Houston Park in downtown Houston. Thousands of drivers stopped on Interstate 45 itself, forcing authorities to shut the freeway down.
The stage itself - in front of the Meridien Hotel - reflected NASA's Mission Control, included a 45-foot-tall copy of the downtown skyline, and featured a symphony orchestra. More than 100 high-school chorus singers and dancers joined Jarre on stage.
He performed his new album, "Rendezvous." The climax of the concert was a saxophone-heavy piece dedicated to astronaut Ron McNair, who died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.
It was a feat: 100 French technicians and 120 American technicians helped set up and operate 2,000 projectors in downtown, in addition to the synthesizers, keyboards and other equipment. The projectors were joined by dozens of fireworks and spotlights, visible some 50 miles away.
About 50 firefighters stood on top of downtown buildings to guard against any potential fires caused by sparks from the fireworks.
Images of Sam Houston, the Statue of Liberty and oil wells were projected onto downtown buildings, in addition to the space images.
"If you were anywhere in the west facing the city skyline, it was just this amazing spectacular," said Susan Christian, director of special events for Mayor Sylvester Turner. She watched the show from what is now Eleanor Tinsley Park.
Ware said Jarre's main goal was to have as many people there as possible. The actual attendance - more than 1.3 million - shattered organizers' expectations, Ware said.
It was the first such event held in Houston, Christian said, and set the tone for future events.
Christian pointed to the "Power of Houston" events held each year from 1997 to 1999 as spectacular audiovisual events that projected lasers and images onto downtown Houston buildings - even grander than the Rendezvous event. Power of Houston was sponsored by Reliant Energy and staged during the Great Tastes of Houston Festival.
Other than those events, though, there hasn't been a display like the one put on by Jarre, who's currently working on a new record.
"He was ahead of his time," Christian said. "He's the granddaddy, he's the originator, he opened up our minds to the possibilities of art playing out on our skyline. What a beautiful thing, man."