| 40th anniversary of the world famous Montreux Jazz Festival startedtoday [message #295461] |
Sa, 01 Juli 2006 06:54 |
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30. June 2006
Swissinfo
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/06/30/eng/article6858262.html
Montreux celebrates 40 years of all that jazz
A star:studded cast of musicians is set to wow the public at the
40th anniversary of the world famous Montreux Jazz Festival,
which kicks off on Friday.
Featuring a stylistic mix of sounds: pop, jazz, avant garde and
rock. The festival, as always, bears the imprint of its
charismatic founder, Claude Nobs.
The 70 year old Nobs has lined up a number of musical legends for
this year's concert series, including B.B. King, Al Jarreau, Van
Morrison, Deep Purple, Sting and Bryan Adams.
There will also be two evenings of concerts dedicated to the
founders of Atlantic Records, the Ertegun brothers, who supported
Nobs through the years.
It was in the 1960s when Nobs was working as a bookkeeper at the
Montreux tourist office that he made a trip to New York where he
arranged a meeting with Nesuhi Ertegun.
Nobs got the first festival off the ground in 1967 and it was not
long after that Nesuhi helped him convince such performers as
Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin to make their European debuts
at Montreux.
Free:jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman and bossa nova star Sergio
Mendes, who is performing for the first time at Montreux, will
take the stage for the homage to Nesuhi on July 2.
The eclectic music mix is typical of Nobs. From the very
beginning his festival was not to be pigeonholed, and he has
always successfully walked a fine line, running an event with
both artistic and commercial impulses.
Gossip
The Montreux director got radio and television stations to
broadcast the shows from the start. The main partners were
French:speaking Swiss television and the Union of European Radio
Stations.
By 1973, the festival was extended to two weeks and had already
become one of the largest of its kind in Europe.
Much of what took place in Montreux lent itself to gossip.
Nevertheless Nobs continued to set trends and take chances with
groundbreaking bands, booking, for example, acts belonging to new
age record label "Windham Hill" at a time when they did not have
much of a following.
Yet, the festival is remembered most for legendary performances
by the likes of Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Roland Kirk, Cecil Taylor
and Archie Shepp.
Smoke on the water
During a Frank Zappa concert in 1971, the Montreux casino burned
to the ground. The resulting Deep Purple hit, "Smoke on the
Water", elevated the festival to cult status.
From Montreux's beginning, almost all performances were
recorded. The first disc was "Live at Montreux" with the Bill
Evans Trio in 1968. Since then, hundreds of records, CDs and DVDs
bearing the label, "Live in Montreux" have been produced. The
allure of "Montreux" shows no sign of abating.
But one famous concert was never recorded, the first appearance
of Bob Dylan at Montreux in 1994. Following the concert, Dylan
told Nobs, "I hope you recorded my concert, it was my best in years".
"No, I didn't", answered Nobs. "You don't allow it."
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