Jazz, soul & blues
Al Jarreau
Al Jarreau (1940-2017) made his European debut in Montreux, on 3 July 1976, and came back almost every summer until 2007, then as a mentor at the Montreux Jazz Academy in 2015. A seven-time Grammy Award winner, one of the few artists to have won in the jazz, pop and rhythm and blues categories, he saw the festival as part of his own story: “Early successes in Montreux and Germany set the stage for my 40 year career here.”
Al Jarreau in Montreux: from 1976 to the academy
3 July 1976: a debut as a duo
Al Jarreau was thirty-five and had just released his first album, “We Got By” (1975), when he was booked for the tenth edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, on 3 July 1976, at the Casino (setlist.fm). These were, along with Germany, his very first concerts in Europe.
The rest of his band never turned up. He played the concert with his pianist alone, Tom Canning. Forty years later, in “Montreux Jazz Festival, 50 Summers of Music” (Arnaud Robert, 2016), he remembered a blazing night. He would play in Montreux in that stripped-down format only once more, in 2016.
Down to his keyboard alone, he filled the gaps with his voice: brass, strings, percussion. “Out of necessity, he imitated all the musical instruments. That is what created his style” Ticketcorner summed up in 2016, in an interview in which the singer looked back on those “wonderful beginnings” (Ticketcorner).
It was the same night that Nina Simone gave the filmed concert that would become one of the most watched in the festival’s history.
A regular, from 1976 to 2007
From 1976 to 2007, Al Jarreau is known to have played at almost every edition of the festival: 1976, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007 (setlist.fm).
On 14 July 1981, he shared the Casino stage with the singer Randy Crawford; Swiss Television kept footage of it, now digitised by FONSART.
His 1993 concert, at the Auditorium Stravinski, was filmed and released on record as “Al Jarreau: Live at Montreux 1993”.
October 2015: mentor at the Montreux Jazz Academy
From 5 to 11 October 2015, Al Jarreau was one of the mentors of the second Montreux Jazz Academy, the festival’s teaching arm. Ten young musicians from around the world (three pianists, three guitarists, four vocalists, all winners of the latest festival’s competitions) received private lessons by day, workshops open to the public at the Sylvia Waddilove centre in Villeneuve, and jam sessions in the evening at the Funky Claude’s Bar of the Montreux Palace.
Alongside him: pianist Yaron Herman (musical director), guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Ziv Ravitz. Two gala concerts, on 8 October, closed the week (24 heures).
July 2016: back to the duo
In July 2016, forty years after his debut, Al Jarreau played Montreux again as a duo, this time with Joe Turano, his musical director, a pianist and saxophonist who has been in his band and co-written his songs for fifteen years. Alina Engibaryan, winner of the academy’s vocal competition, joined them on stage for “Água de Beber” and “Mas que Nada” (aljarreau.com).
He described how far “Claude Nobs’s baby” had come: from one stage in a low-ceilinged, hot and sweaty casino basement to a convention centre with several halls. It was one of his last concerts.
In the interview he gave then, he summed up what had always carried him: “Music can be a healing force as powerful as medicine. Music is a balm for the soul.”
He died on 12 February 2017 in Los Angeles, two days after announcing that he was retiring from touring, worn out. He had been expected back at the academy.