Montreux Jazz Festival

Month : July
Place : Switzerland
Famous For : Music Festival
Attractions : Jazz music, Themed Shows, Workshops and Competitions

The Montreux Jazz Festival is one of the most prestigious music festivals in Europe. Tagged as the best known music festival in Switzerland , the musical extravaganza is held every year during the month of July at the shores of Lake Geneva. The event originally started as a pure jazz festival, but it opened up in the 1970s to reach its current stage presenting artists of nearly every imaginable music style. However, jazz continues to dominate but the festival has evolved as a two week long common platform for different genres of music.

Major Attractions

The Montreux Jazz Festival traces its origin in the year 1967, when it was founded by Claude Nobs, G"o Voumard and Ren" Langel. Beside these two, Ahmet Erteg"n and Nesuhi Erteg"n of Atlantic Records also helped them in this venture. The first edition of this festival was held at at Montreux Casino. It was a three days long celebration and featured only the jazz artists. Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Evans, Soft Machine, Weather Report and others were the highlights of this edition. In December 1971, Montreux Casino burned down and the festival was forced to move until the new Casino was ready in 1975. In the start of 1980's, the festival expanded even more, including music from all over the world. In 1993, the festival moved to the larger Convention Centre, which hosts two main stages, Stravinsky Auditorium and Miles Davis Hall, as well as the smaller Montreux Jazz Cafe, and several smaller open-air stages around the Centre. Additional themed shows like Bahia, Blues, etc are held on boats cruising the lake and train cars traveling the region, and various workshops and competitions are held at the nearby Montreux Palais and Le Petit Palais.