Montreux and the music

I wish I had more time for this blog because there are so many things I could write about. For example a weekend trip to the Montreux Jazz Festival.

I went there with the Bensnburner Backing Band who played together with the local band Bleep from the artist collective Loft A46. My job was to film the concert and it was the first time I filmed. Respect to all camera men! Up to 5 hours holding a camera as still as possible without the help of a tripod is a challenge for untrained muscles.

Thanks to the normal traffic jams on Swiss highways we arrived Montreux late. As side effect we hit a thunderstorm short before we arrived at the Lake Geneva. The mountains and the lake were the perfect scenery for the black and deep clouds. What an epic ride through lightnings hitting the ground close beside the car! I drove a quite old car that was slightly overloaded so that the descend to the lake on a the flooded highway released a nice dose of adrenaline.

Many people know Montreux from Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the water" and besides this hit many other famous songs were recorded there. For example Queen owned a recording studio in Montreux. In my opinion the beautiful landscape around Montreux is a main reason that this small town attracted many bands to stay longer than for the festival. I think you will second that:

View from the old town towards the French side of the lake.
 

View along the shore line to river mouth of the Rhône.
But what is this? Let's zoom in...

... it is the Château de Chillon.

The entrance to the Valais.

View from the Freddy Mercury statue.

The town is also quite nice. I like that special Art déco style:

View out of the window of our sleeping place.

The house where we slept.

In the Avenue des Alpes.

My favorite is the house Avenue des Alpes 80:

Doesn't look very special but note the details:

The old town is a bit up the hill:

High above the town are some grand hotels. This is the Palace hotel:

Here is an image of the impressive building.

There are also some nice hiking tracks and canyons around Montreux and two narrow gauge railway lines bringing you up to the mountains.
If you want to go to Montreux don't be shocked of the extreme prices. For example in a normal restaurant a steak (without anything else like potatoes etc.) cost about 42 €!

Back to music. The concert was given in the mentioned Loft A46 and was not part of the official Jazz festival program. As I had to film I only have images from the rehearsal:

The location.

Between the gigs of the two bands the singer-songwriter Mark Kelly played a few songs. I didn't know him before and he impressed my with his voice, with the deep thoughts in his texts but also with his ability to animate the audience. If you need a great voice and/or performer, contact him! Here are some of his songs: It's true, Oh my god and Can't give you more. He performed the latter just with the guitar - goose bump feeling.

Mark Kelly in concert.

The Jazz festival itself takes place in the Montreux Musique & Convention Centre as major venue. Although the prices are incredibly high, most of the concerts are sold out. But there is a stage in a park besides the centre where you have a program for free during the whole day. Along the lake promenade there are dozens of tents with small shops. Therefore it feels disappointingly like you are on an average village summer event.
The Jazz festival manages that their sound recordings became part of the UNESCO's Memory of the World. In their special Jazz festival museum the present somewhat strange things like a special room where you can listen to music from last year's festival recalculated by computers to hear it as if it was played in the old casino that burned down in 1971.
All in all the festival is a great opportunity to see some of the best artists on this planet live but I fear that the rich people who are able to buy a ticket won't dance and party as much as the artists and the music deserves it. (I also fear that I will never have enough money to check if this is true ;-) )

At the promenade.

In the Jazz festival museum.