Montreux Jazz Festival Experience

Friday 8th July

Left Peckham for Montreux.  Last-minute check of details for hostel - luckily, for I discovered I had opted to bring my own sleeping bag and had forgotten to pack it!  Good save.

I'm off to compete in the 2011 jazz vocals competition at the festival.  The president of the competition is Quincy Jones.
The BA flight to Geneva was fine, and I arrived in time to take a beautiful lake-side train journey in the evening sunlight.  It took about an hour to get to Vevey, where I'm staying.  Vevey is a lovely small town with a lot going for it - picturesque mountain-scenery backdrop, 21°C lake, 2 mountain railway stations, excellent market, good (albeit expensive) restaurants and mountain-side vineyards.  In fact, they make such good use of space here that even the railway tunnels have vines planted up the sides.  When I arrived, the sound of a brass band coaxed me down to the lake-side and I spent a glorious half hour watching the sun set and listening to the music from the band stand.

Saturday 9th July

Semi-finals day.
I had spent the night in an 8-bed down, which was empty when I went to sleep and full when I got up.  *(Bizarrely... it's now Sunday as I write this and I still haven't seen anyone awake!)*  I crept out in the morning for my early bus to Montreux to rehearse with the band.  I met a couple of other singers, but this isn't really like the other competition I've done - we have all been left to fend for ourselves and most people have a companion with them, so I'm all alone.

The rehearsal went well so I went back to Vevey and spent the rest of the day browsing the shops and market.  This town feels very French - an accordion player on each corner, (at one point I heard the strains of The X-Files theme floating through the air!) and thankfully it is a French-speaking part of Switzerland, otherwise I'd be very lost!  I have been massively impressed with the Montreux Jazz Festival so far - it's quite clearly a major deal through the Montreux Riviera, with massive amounts of advertising, and discounts for festival goers on trains to and from Geneva airport.  There is even a free bus - the bus that runs through Montreux becomes free of charge to all public during festival hours.  If only they did that for the London Jazz Festival!

So at 5pm, we began the semi-finals.  Quincy Jones was in the front row, as the president of the Jury, although I couldn't see him because of the bright spot lights.  My performance went well.  I performed a complicated arrangement of Fascinating Rhythm and my own song Darning the Dream.  The whole show ran very late, as predicted, with some singers using the whole 10 minutes' allocation on just one of their songs (although they weren't asked to stop!) so it wasn't til quite late that we heard the results.  Three singers got through to the final.  Unfortunately I wasn't one of them.  There was so much talent on stage that I'm not at all surprised, but disappointed nevertheless.

Sunday 10th July

It's raining.  It rained most of the night, and storms have continued through much of the day, limiting the day's activities particularly as I don't have a final to practise for!  Vevey is a lovely place though to sit and have a cup of tea (or four) to pass the time before my free bus to watch the finals.

Quincy Jones telling me I reminded him of Billie Holiday...
because I wore flowers in my hair(!)

This year, the finals presented a one-off situation in that the first prize was split between two people.  It's hard to see how that will practically work, as the prize is a week of recording at a studio to make a CD, but both the winners were great so I wish them well for the joint album!  All the competitors were given a free ticket to the evening's main festival concert, which turned out to be... Natalie Cole!  It actually started off with a performance from last year's vocal-piano winners, then the first set was Mario Biondi, which went on for a bit, but he had to please his die-hard fans who had travelled from Italy to see him.

Then the lady herself Ms Cole, who was the first jazz singer I really ever listened to.  AMAZING!

It was so brilliant to see her in real life and a great way to end my Montreux Experience.