She's a wonderful character, full of stories. Mike Costa is a good interviewer, but I wish he'd let her talk more with fewer interruptions. She had so much more to say!
I hadn’t heard about Rochella before, her name hasn’t come up before for me. I knew about Kathy Whitmire, the Mayor of Houston had a hand in bringing Jean-Michel Jarre to Houston, but Rochella seems to have had the main role in making the show happen.
Interesting that his first idea was big screen set up around downtown, but she wanted something more ambitious and only when she took him on a helicopter ride did he start to think big. She should have stuck with him as part of his team! She’s amazing!
I love the fact they she ran research with the local population about what Houston means to them to inspire the programme for Houston Festival ’86 and the two key messages were “Arts and Technology” and those two words became the basis for the show – perfect!
Rochella says that she saw a film of the Concerts in China that gave her the idea to invite JMJ and refers to “fireworks coming off buildings” but that must be a hazy recollection because all the 1982 China shows were indoors. Perhaps she saw a mix of China and Concorde?
She says film-maker Bradford Thomas is putting together a "behind the scenes" documentary about Rendezvous Houston - that should be great! By when will this be ready? Next year, perhaps, the 40th anniversary of the show?
No crime that night, and the mesmerising effect of the show, people talking about it for weeks later, like in the grocery store “Did you see the show?” – this is something JMJ has talked about with his shows, and features in the La Défense photobook insert interview, that his shows bring people together in an age when they don’t even know their neighbours.
When he was planning Docklands in the years after Houston, the London councils were worried about crime, and I recall Charlotte Rampling saying that the authorities should stop thinking about a JMJ show like a rock or pop concert – and the disorder that can come with these events – and instead think of it like an opera.
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01.09.93 Manchester / 07.06.97 Manchester / 30.03.08 London / 22.05.09 London / 10.10.10 London / 01.07.11 Monaco / 04.05.16 London / 23.07.16 Macclesfield / 06.10.16 Brighton / 07.10.16 London / 12.05.24 Bratislava / 14.07.24 La Rochelle / 01.07.25 Brussels / 21.10.26 Amsterdam.
