"Inviting musicians to both perform and stay by Lake Geneva and meet other world-class musicians in a beautiful and intimate setting is something which can't be replicated online."
Over the years the Festival has withstood plenty of challenges, not least the loss of its principal music venue to fire during a performance by Frank Zappa in 1971. How has the Festival responded to the current crisis posed by the Pandemic?
The Covid-19 Pandemic has obviously hit the music and events industry hard – we should not forget that the live-music industry is only 60+ years old and this pandemic is arguably the biggest challenge which it has faced since then. In many ways we were fortunate with the Montreux Jazz Festival in having a multi-decade brand with a clear purpose, great musical content and loyal audiences. In particular, the festival's history in recording performances helped us transition to a digital festival in 2020 with relative ease. When Claude Nobs in the 1960s decided that live performances should be filmed, little did we know that the Festival would end up contributing over 5,000 hours of musical footage to UNESCO's Memory of the World, including jam sessions with Marvin Gaye as well as Miles Davis' last performance in 1991.
I personally believe that smaller more intimate festivals are better placed to deliver high-quality online musical experiences than mega-festivals.
Building on this audio-visual heritage we built out the 55th festival in 2020 with live-streamed performances, bringing music to our listeners at home. The transition was also made easier by the fact that we are an intimate festival – our largest concert venue has a capacity of 4,000 and most stages are much smaller. When you consider that some of the big music festivals like Coachella or Glastonbury bring together over 100,000 fans per day, switching to a virtual or hybrid festival with a mixture of live and recorded events was never going to be as challenging for us. That said, we've missed doing what Montreux Jazz Festival does best – hospitality. Inviting musicians to both perform and stay by Lake Geneva and meet other world-class musicians in a beautiful and intimate setting is something which can't be replicated online. We look forward to getting back to creating these moments with our audiences and artists in the near future.
The Pandemic is not the first market disrupter for the broader music industry. The last great shake-up came in the 2000s...
As a leader in the field of organising music festivals, how can the music industry adapt to the Pandemic and what measures are event organisers taking to engage with audiences in the coming months/years?
The Pandemic is not the first market disrupter for the broader music industry. The last great shake-up came in the 2000s, after the CD boom of the 1990s and the initial shift to digitally downloaded music. This period saw the collapse of record-labels and the rise of agents who became all-powerful in marketing and giving access to artists. It was also a period fraught with difficulty for artists and their ability to capture revenue in an online world where music piracy and copyright issues were rampant.
This has changed with the rise of digital streaming platforms and social media in the last few years. Both need music content and the right to use that content legally. This has led to partnerships between record labels and social-media giants such as Ten Cent or TikTok. Meanwhile the rise of smartphones, music streaming platforms such as Spotify and live music broadcasting platforms such as Stingray Music are all breathing new life into the music industry. This trend will long outlast the current Pandemic.
Returning to the fate of festivals, organisers are clearly going to have to embrace online streaming channels. I personally believe that smaller more intimate festivals are better placed to deliver high-quality online musical experiences than mega-festivals. As impressive as large crowds are, it's very hard to ensure audio quality for a virtual audience in such settings.