‘Something totally different’ - Montreux Jazz Festival CEO on what makes it so special - video Dailymotion

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Transcript

00:00My name is Mathieu Jaton, I'm the CEO of the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

00:07Our role as a festival organizer is really to give the chance to the artists to create the magic

00:13and that's what we're trying to do every day. This is really for everyone coming here

00:18to live an experience that they never lived before, thanks to the sightseeing,

00:22thanks to the beauty of Montreux, the lake, the mountains, but also the hospitality,

00:27the smallness of the festival which brings a lot of intimacy. It makes that the artists,

00:32they feel home sweet home and they are meeting each other, they have a good time,

00:37they can relax, it's a kind of bubble of fresh air and that makes something totally different

00:42with Montreux and the history of course from Maritha Franklin, Nina Simone, David Bowie,

00:47Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, all those people that put in Montreux on a map of the world,

00:53it's giving the artists the freedom and the happiness to play, they love playing with others

00:59and when they have the freedom, when they have no constraints, there is no curfew,

01:04they can go to bed at five, six in the morning, they can play in the jam till five in the morning,

01:08that makes things totally different. When you're touring all year long and you're 150 days in a

01:13row and you're going to very very massive events and you have a start of 45 minutes and then you

01:18have to leave and go back to the hotel and when you arrive in Montreux it's like the time is

01:23stopping. For me one of the most beautiful stories of course David Bowie and Freddie Mercury,

01:30Freddie and Quin were recording at a mountain studio and David was around and they were up

01:36in chalet of Claude Knops and they're having dinner and Claude told him why don't you guys

01:41do something tonight and they went back to the studio and the day after the camp was under

01:45pressure which one of the most famous song ever. When Stormzy was here last year and he said oh

01:52we're in Montreux, I won't do like a regular hip-hop concert, I'm going to do like a gospel concert.

01:59So that makes things totally different for us and for the audience, so the audience

02:05are expecting something will happen and sometimes it's happening and it's beautiful.