Pop
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran (born 1991), British singer-songwriter, became one of the best-selling artists on the planet, alone with his guitar and his loop pedal. Montreux saw him come through from his early days, long before the stadiums.
Ed Sheeran in Montreux, before the stadiums
30 June 2012: alone with his guitar
On 30 June 2012, Ed Sheeran played the Miles Davis Hall of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Alone on stage, a guitar and a loop pedal for his whole army, he held the entire room: “The A Team”, “Lego House”, “Give Me Love”, “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You”, drawn from his debut album “+”, interspersed with a cover of Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband”.
The redhead, born in Halifax and raised in Framlingham, was only twenty-one; his method — building everything live, layer after layer — already fascinated.
2014, then the stadiums
He returned on 19 July 2014 to the Montreux Jazz Lab, at the time of the album “x” and of “Sing”. A few years later, that same man alone with a guitar would fill, without a band, the biggest stadiums on the planet.
Montreux had seen him on a human scale, within arm’s reach, just before the world became his — as it managed to do with so many future idols at the Jazz Lab.