Montreux Jazz Festival releases archive treasures ahead of 50th anniversary
Monday, February 8, 2016
The first details of the 50th anniversary edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, which will be held in the Swiss town of Montreux from 1-16 July this year, have been announced, accompanied by the release of footage from the festival’s archives.
At an event, attended by Jazzwise, at the chalet of the festival’s late founder, Claude Nobs, Montreux Jazz Festival CEO Mathieu Jaton unveiled Montreux Jazz Live, a free online platform featuring more than 800 videos recorded at festivals across the years. The platform allows members of the public to watch legendary performances by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, in addition to footage of rock and pop icons such as Prince and David Bowie.
It is the culmination of a long-running project to digitise recordings of the festival, which has been filmed in its entirety since it began in 1967. In total, the Montreux archives comprise over 5,000 hours of live music. Their importance was recognised by UNESCO, who included them on their Memory of the World Register in 2013.
Alongside this announcement, Jaton also unveiled the poster for this year’s event. Created by artist Giovanni Riva, it features a composite Montreux Jazz Festival logo made using fragments of posters from the past 49 years, among them famous designs by Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. An interactive version of the poster can also be viewed below, where each fragment triggers a short video featuring highlights from that edition of the festival.
Throughout the evening, Jaton paid tribute to festival founder Claude Nobs, who died in a skiing accident in 2013 and would have been 80 this month, describing him as a man with big dreams and “a gift for bringing about the unexpected.”
The lineup for this year’s festival will be revealed on 14 April, but is rumoured to include a gala concert directed by Quincy Jones, a long-time friend of Montreux, to mark the half-century. Tickets for all performances will go on sale on 15 April.
– Thomas Rees
For more information visit www.montreuxjazzfestival.com