Jazz, soul & blues

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), the founding father of jazz, was the first great jazz musician to perform in Montreux. In 1934, aged thirty-three and already world-famous, he gave a concert at the Casino-Kursaal, as part of the “Kursaal Dancing” evenings, during the European tour that established American jazz on the continent. A trumpeter and singer with an unmistakable voice, “Satchmo” thus opened, more than thirty years before the Montreux Jazz Festival was born, the long history of jazz on the shores of Lake Geneva.