The legendary jazz festival, celebrating 40 years this month - is still the place where the amazing happens, writes Ray Driscoll
The Montreux Jazz Festival, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, concluded last Saturday with a poignant Deep Purple concert - Deep Purple wrote their famous song Smoke on the Water here 35 years ago, after witnessing the casino burning to the ground. Montreux is the festival of festivals: it's not a weekend festival, not even a week-long festival, it's a two-week festival, usually at the beginning of July, crammed with events and with all the organisational skills the Swiss can muster, but without diluting the atmosphere whatsoever. This year had such a diversity of artists that it would almost be impossible to make any attempts at genre categorisation. But if I say Abdullah Ibrahim, Al Jarreau, André Ceccarelli, Beverley Knight, Biréli, David Sanborn, Deep Purple, Diana Krall, Diego El Cigala, Gladys Knight and Gotan Project all in one breath, then you'll get the picture.
Since its inception in 1967, when it was just a three-day event, the Montreux Jazz Festival has risen to dizzy musical heights, also in terms of sustainability - 16 days and nights with three main venues, three free "off" stages, with its various competitions and workshops, a budget of Sf 17.6 million (€11.3 million) in 2005, 220,000 visitors (of whom 100,000 bought tickets): 61,000 people saw 37 bands at the Stravinsky Auditorium, 23,000 saw 53 bands at the Miles Davis Hall, and 16,000 saw 45 bands at the Casino Barrière. In addition to this, 119 bands played the free Off Festival to an immeasurable sea of people, 39 DJs spinning for the Jazz Café's after-gig-drink crowd, 530 accredited journalists capturing it all and with a staggering 1,250 staff, it must be one of the biggest festivals in the world.
Festival founder and still director after 40 years Claude Nobs, whose natural flamboyance, hands-on approach and personal friendships with most of the artists, has played no small part in the special atmosphere that is Montreux - the place where everyone wants to play. So many artists in fact want to play Montreux that the festival could feasibly run the whole summer - once, in the 1970s, it ran for 23 days.
Legend has it that as a young tourist office representative in the 1960s on a trip to New York, Nobs swung by the Atlantic Records office and asked to speak to Nesuhi Ertegun, then director of Atlantic, whose father, was a formerTurkish ambassador to Berne. An instant rapport ensued between the two and the rest is history. In those days, Atlantic's roster included Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Roland Kirk, Wilson Pickett - it was the right place for the young Swiss jazz fan to show his colours, being the budding promoter whose love and knowledge of jazz was probably greater than most of the musicians he was hiring.
His record collection, for example, is the envy of any who are fortunate enough to visit his home.
Claude Nobs personally entertains the who's who of the music world, and nowadays David Bowie or Gary Moore can be seen strolling through the forest near his home, where once Miles Davis or Ray Charles might have been seen in the past.
With appearances over the years of such legendary greats from jazz, blues, rock, world and soul music, including Miles Davis, Maria Bethânia, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, David Sanborn, George Benson, Eric Clapton, Sting, Oscar Peterson, Roberta Flack, Dizzy Gillespie, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Herbie Hancock, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Elvis Costello - not forgetting our own Rory Gallagher, Van Morrison and Gary Moore - who have made innumerable appearances over the years.
AND ALL THIS on the banks of Lake Geneva, in the shade of tropical palms, overlooking the sometimes snow-capped French Alps across the lake? Year after year, visitors from all over the world descend on the otherwise sleepy lakeside town, to experience the festival nights in the capacity venues: the Stravinsky Auditorium, or the club-like Miles Davis Hall next door; or in Casino Barrie, housed in the newly rebuilt casino and affectionately called Deep Purple; or to hear any of the piano, or solo competitions in the Petit Théatre in the very grand Montreux Palace hotel. They also enjoy acoustic concerts, daily workshops given by some of the headliners, and the four musical cruises on the lake, themed samba, salsa, gospel and dance.
And because Montreux is surrounded by mountains resting sleepily between ski seasons, festival-goers can step on board the New Orleans Steam Train to Rochers de Naye just above Montreux, with its breathtaking scenery and views over the lake; or take the Jazz Panoramic Train to Gstaad. And if they haven't had enough by then they can slip into the early hours at the Jazz Café (a converted parking house under the Stravinsky Auditorium) with DJs, live-music and jam sessions where you just might find Herbie Hancock astride a piano with some local musicians. Yes, Montreux is a place where the amazing still happens.
In the virtual village set up along 3km of lakefront, with its own "jazz" currency, you can eat and drink at any of the multicultural, purpose-built chalets, with their own lakeside wooden decks. At the Off Festival, there are free concert - you just have to buy your beer and food.
THIS YEAR, I enjoyed the archive material too, relayed on a giant screen in the Stravinsky foyer and broadcast simultaneously on local TV. I was overwhelmed to see the 1984 replay of the Myles Davis rendition of Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper, with his audience, choir-like, echoing his trumpet, played with such feeling and conviction that I hardly recognised the song. It was one of those true Montreux moments. Last year's highlight was seeing Elvis Costello playing so many encores that the concert was twice as long as it was billed to be.
I also witnessed 80-year-old BB King's tearful farewell to Montreux where he has graced the stage and many guitar workshops over the past 20 years. An audience in tune with an artist in tune with a festival in tune with itself, and they just didn't want to let him go. Still perplexed from the Myles Davis archive, I was taken in by some US high school churning up a gear on a free stage and just as I settled in, the conductor gestured to some gawky kid from the back row, who came forward and melted me with the type of sax playing he shouldn't be able to understand at his age, and I thought the future of jazz is in safe hands, alive and well and cookin', in Montreux.
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