Museums, studios & shops

Type

Foundation

Address

Caux, Montreux

Not open to visitors

Recognised as being of public interest, the Claude Nobs Foundation was created in 2014 by Thierry Amsallem, Claude Nobs’s partner of twenty-five years, to keep his legacy alive: the festival archives, his chalets at Caux and the spirit of hospitality that made Montreux’s reputation. It works hand in hand with Montreux Sounds, the rights holder, and with the EPFL, which digitises the Claude Nobs Collection inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World.

The Claude Nobs Foundation

A foundation for a legacy

When Claude Nobs died in January 2013, his partner Thierry Amsallem set himself the task of preserving everything he left behind: the tapes, the objects, the chalets, and a certain idea of celebration and friendship. In 2014 he created the Claude Nobs Foundation, recognised as being of public interest.

The foundation watches over the chalets at Caux and their fabulous bric-a-brac, over the interactive bench by the lake, and over the memory of the man to whom Montreux dedicated a statue and an avenue.

Digitising the Collection

With the EPFL, the foundation continues to safeguard the Claude Nobs Collection produced by Montreux Sounds: more than eleven thousand hours of concerts filmed and recorded from 1967 to 2013, inscribed in 2013 in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. This undertaking, the Montreux Jazz Digital Project, restores, indexes and showcases this heritage for researchers and the public alike.

Listening and viewing spaces born of the project, at the EPFL and elsewhere, make it possible to relive the great concerts of the Montreux Jazz Festival in conditions close to the hall.

Keeping the “Funky Claude” spirit alive

Beyond the archives, the foundation keeps alive the most living part of the legacy: music played among friends. It brings together the “Funky Claude All Star Band”, some thirty musicians close to Claude Nobs who meet in Caux, in Zurich and in the United States for concerts in his honour.

It is the same idea as the fondue evenings at the chalet: music as a pretext for meeting, exactly what Nobs loved above all.

During the festival: the spirit of the chalets

Every summer the foundation extends the festival in its own way, alongside the official programme. For the 55th edition, in 2021, it gathered at the chalets of Caux and the Funky Claude’s Bar a crowd of guests, musicians and actors: Shania Twain, Bo Derek and her husband John Corbett, Richard Marx, Bobby Brown, Ray Parker Jr., Steve Lukather (Toto), bassist Nathan East and Eric Benet, amid workshops, film screenings with Christian Jungen’s Zurich Film Festival, jam sessions and receptions.

Thierry Amsallem, founder and president, sums up the aim: to preserve the spirit of the festival as Claude Nobs wanted it, made of hospitality, breathtaking views and encounters between artists. “Creating unforgettable emotions and memories is the best way to make them come back to Montreux” he explains, alongside his board member and patron, the businessman and film producer Ola Strøm (Claude Nobs Foundation).

▶

Related artists :Claude NobsRomero Britto