Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) never set foot in Montreux: he died seventy-three years before the festival’s first edition. It was his invention that brought him there. This Belgian instrument maker, born in Dinant, patented the saxophone family in 1846, an instrument meant for military bands that became the emblem of jazz. Montreux paid tribute to him in 2014, for the bicentenary of his birth, with a giant saxophone in psychedelic patterns set on the quays, a few steps from the busts of Miles Davis and Richard Strauss.
