Jazz, soul & blues
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil (born 1942 in Salvador de Bahia) is one of the greatest figures of Brazilian music. Co-founder of Tropicália with Caetano Veloso, Brazil’s Minister of Culture from 2003 to 2008 and a UNESCO ambassador, he has blended samba, bossa, reggae and pop for over sixty years. Montreux welcomed him from 1982 and many times since.
Gilberto Gil: fifteen times in Montreux
From 1982 to the family stage
Gilberto Gil played Montreux for the first time in 1982, an evening the festival kept on an album. He returned over the decades, up to July 2023, for what the festival called his fifteenth Montreux concert, surrounded on stage by his children and relatives.
For Gil, music is a matter of transmission as much as of career: the little boy from Bahia became a monument, without ever ceasing to invent.
Dois Amigos: with Caetano, in 2015
On 15 July 2015, Gilberto Gil shared the stage of the Auditorium Stravinski with his lifelong friend, Caetano Veloso. It was a stop on their “Dois Amigos, um século de música” tour, celebrating half a century of friendship: two voices, two guitars, and the whole history of Tropicália.
An intimate night at the Cully Jazz
Before his great concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Gilberto Gil gave himself a rarer moment in Lavaux. On 29 March 2011 he took the stage of the Cully Jazz Festival in intimate line-up, with his son Bem Gil (guitar and percussion) and cellist Jacques Morelenbaum. “This show feels like something intimate, in a living room,” he told Swiss radio (swissinfo.ch): music, but also a matter of family.
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