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Montreux Jazz Festival |
 Montreux Jazz Festival dates for 2008 are 4th to 19th July.
From humble and near disasterous beginnings, the Montreux Jazz Festival has become one of the world's biggest music events.
With the event now running for two weeks and catering to over 220,000 music fans, Montreux has grown and matured since it's first 3 day outing in 1967.
No longer just for jazz lovers, the line up reads like a "Who's Who" of the music business, and its success is down to the vision, tenacity and foresight of Claude Nobs.
Nobs an ardent jazz lover had always had a vision of a jazz based festival and while working for the Montreux Tourist Office started to put together a plan that if accepted would see the creation of a jazz based Eurovision. The concept, floated on a small budget, saw European radio coverage, countries sending there best bands for free, plus the added benefit of EBU sponsorship. |
 The first jazz festival featured artists such as Charles Lloyd, Keith Jarrett, Ron McLure and Jack DeJohnette. This new festival was an immediate success, and gained a reputation far beyond Switzerland. Nobs quickly transformed his festival into an international gathering place for lovers of jazz.
The original venue, the old Montreux Casino, burned down in December 1971 during Frank Zappa's performance, ("Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple tells that story) and is now held in the much larger convention centre.
Always a jazz festival at heart, it opened up in the 1970s and today presents artists of nearly every imaginable music style including blues, soul, and rock artists and is best now a true world music festival.
Want to go ? It is held annually in early July in Montreux on the shores of Lake Geneva. |
 Montreux Jazz Competitions.
Three international competitions are organised by the Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation 2 every year: Solo Piano, Guitar and Voice. For each competition a jury composed of professionals and chaired by a world famous musician (in 2007: Fazil Say for the Piano Solo, George Benson for the Guitar, Al Jarreau for the Voice competition) award the three prices. In addition, a local competition, the Tremplin Lémanique, is aimed at jazz bands that are based in one of the regions of the Léman lake: the French departments of Ain and Haute Savoie and the Swiss cantons of Geneva, Vaud and Valais. All the information is available on: [www.fondation2.ch]. The yearly deadline to apply is April 15. |
 Montreux Jazz Cafe Geneva Airport.
2008 sees the launch af the first Montreux Jazz Cafe in Geneva Airport. The theme for the cafe's (this to be the first) is to give out the feel of the festival, with music and concerts played on-screen. |
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