René Langel

René Langel (1927-2016), journalist and jazz critic, was with Claude Nobs and Géo Voumard one of the three founders of the Montreux Jazz Festival, in 1967. His pen and his ear accompanied the beginnings of the adventure.

René Langel: from Antibes to Montreux

The Antibes encounter

“On the beach at Antibes in 1966, a shadow suddenly rose between the sun and me,” René Langel recalled: that young stranger was Claude Nobs, an employee of the tourist office, who wanted to set up a festival. Langel, who at the time followed the festivals from Juan-les-Pins to Locarno, agreed to help him; with the pianist Géo Voumard, the trio was born.

The first edition, in 1967, was as much a European orchestra competition as a “jazz fair”, with a record market and saxophone workshops. The 10,000-franc subsidy served to book the quartet of Charles Lloyd (24 heures ↗).

Claude Nobs’s accomplice

Of Claude Nobs, Langel kept the memory of “a boy who kept his eyes wide open on life and bit into it”, endowed with “a naïve self-assurance” and “a diabolical skill for influencing others, for spurring them on”.

He also knew what had made Montreux: the lake, the steep hinterland that every musician loved, and the brilliant idea of a recording studio. “The concerts turned into records,” he summed up, citing the live album by Bill Evans captured in 1968 and crowned with a Grammy the following year.