Unlike many musicians who started to learn music while still in theirchildhood, Maurice Jarre was already late in his teens when hediscovered music and decided to make a career in that field. Againsthis father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where hestudied percussions, composition and harmonies. He also met and studiedunder Joseph Martenot, inventor of the Martenot Waves, an electronickeyboard that prefigured the modern synthesizer.

After leaving the Conservatoire, Jarre played percussion and MartenotWaves for a while atJean-Louis Barrault's theater. In 1950, anotheractor-director,Jean Vilar , asked Jarre to score his production ofKleist's 'The Princess of Homburg', the first score Jarre wrote.Shortly after, Vilar created the 'Théâtre National Populaire' and hiredJarre as permanent composer, an association that lasted 12 years.

In 1951, filmmakerGeorges Franju askedhim to write the music of his 23 minutes documentaryHôtel des Invalides (1952),Jarre's first composition for the movie screen. His first full-lengthfeature, again directed by Georges Franju, wasLa tête contre les murs (1959)followed by Franju's best known film,Les yeux sans visage (1960).

Jarre's career took a spectacular turn in 1961 when producerSam Spiegel asked him to work onDavid Lean'sArabia no Rorensu (1962).Initially, three composers were supposed to write the score, but forvarious reasons, Jarre ended up writing all the music himself and wonhis first Oscar. His second collaboration with David Lean onDoctor Zhivago (1965) earned himanother Oscar and obtained a level of success rarely achieved by a filmscore. He collaborated with Lean again onRaian no musume (1970) andIndo eno Michi (1984)for which he received a third Academy Award. He was set to score Lean'snext movie, 'Nostromo', but the director became ill and died before thefilm could ever get made.

He also worked for directors as diverse asWilliam Wyler(The Collector (1965));John Huston (three films);Franco Zeffirelli(Nazare no Iesu (1977));Volker Schlöndorff(Buriki no Taiko (1979) [TheTin Drum] andDie Fälschung (1981) [Circle ofDeceit]);Peter Weir (four films);Michael Apted(Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988))andAlfonso Arau(A Walk in the Clouds (1995)).

Mainly perceived as a symphonist and known for his prominent use ofpercussions, Jarre often integrated ethnic instruments in hisorchestrations like cithara on 'Lawrence of Arabia' or fujara (an oldSlovak flute) on 'The Tin Drum'. During the eighties, he incorporatedsynthetic sounds in his music, writing his first entirely electronicscore forThe Year of Living Dangerously (1982).His sonJean-Michel Jarre is awell-known popular musician.

- IMDb mini biography by: François Leclair