All That Jazz (And More) at Montreux
Keeping things loose and fluid for a variety of acts and performance styles
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Every summer since 1968, when the Montreux Jazz Festival was founded by local musician and businessman Claude Nobs, the picturesque northeastern banks of Lake Geneva undergo a temporary metamorphosis into Europe’s epicenter for live music. |
To this day, Nobs remains at the helm of the event as its director and
regularly appears on stage as a guest harmonica player, however, the “jazz”
moniker now describes only a piece of the musical pie. The festival’s
37th season featured an extremely diverse roster of artists, including
the likes of Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Jamiroquai, ZZ Top and Cypress
Hill through to Tony Bennett, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Charles Lloyd
and the John Abercrombie Quartet, the latter half proving that the festival’s
roots have not been forgotten.
Up until the early ‘90s, Montreux’s Casino Barrière served as the primary
performance venue. However, as the event’s popularity increased and boundaries
between musical styles began to blur, the scope of the three-day-turned-three-week
program finally outgrew the venue.
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SHIFTING FOCUS The larger of the two is the 2,500-capacity Auditorium Stravinski, which, as the name suggests, was built for classical orchestral concerts and has a lively four-second reverb time. |
Over 20 years ago, John Meyer, before founding the loudspeaker company
bearing his name, as well as a team from the Swiss Institute of Advanced
Musical Studies, performed a battery of acoustical tests in the venue.
As a result, a large number of acoustic panels were designed to dramatically
dry the reverb, and with them in place, concerts at this year’s festival
again gave no signs that the hall acoustics presented even the slightest
problem.
Meyer Sound’s support of the festival is well known and its cabinets are
now ubiquitous at Montreux each year, including at the Stravinski, where
M3D line array systems on either side of the stage were complemented by
M2D center speakers and downfills that provided a finely detailed sound.
Patrick Vogelsang is the festival’s technical director for audio, a job
that he shares with his rest-of-the-year position as managing director
of Niveau 2, Meyer’s Swiss distributor. Being one of Europe’s premier
showcases, competition for involvement with the festival is keen and proper
Swiss neutrality is ensured by sponsorship manager Mathieu Jaton and technical
director André Vouilloz.
Vogelsang explained that Meyer has provided speaker systems to Montreux
since 1988, though a major part of the Swiss live sound business revolves
around corporate events, making Meyer’s lightweight MILO high-power curvilinear
array a popular option. However, it also proved itself a highly successful
concert system at the 2,200-capacity Miles Davis Hall, which enjoyed a
total makeover since last year.
The stage has been re-located and widened to 50 feet and its new rigging
points meant that Lausanne-based audio production company Hyperson, whose
involvement with Montreux goes back to 1989, found the load-in and setup
even quicker than normal.
HOW MANY DESKS?
Aside from Meyer’s long-time association with the festival, this year
marked Soundcraft’s second consecutive year as a technical partner. The
Soundcraft mixers were largely supplied through the manufacturer’s local
distributor and one of Switzerland’s longest standing pro-audio companies,
Dr. W.A. Günther Audio Systems.
Willi Günther recently celebrated his own 90th birthday and the company’s
50th anniversary, placing him amongst the Kudelski and Studer pioneers
of the prestigious Swiss audio industry.
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Günther’s vice-president, Roland Bricchi notes that there were
over 20 Soundcraft desks in use at Montreux this year, many of which
were also supplied by Hyperson and fellow equipment subcontractor
Dispatch. FOH and monitor versions of the Soundcraft Series FIVE were in
use at the Stravinski and Miles Davis venues, but the Jazz Club,
also part of the convention center, couldn’t easily accommodate
the large-format desk due to extremely limited space. Therefore,
the newly-launched, dual-purpose MH3 provided a convenient way to
handle both house and monitor feeds from a side-of-stage mixing
position. |
Sound engineer Frank Cavet worked with the MH3 in the Jazz Club. “I am
using the desk for four monitor sends and two effects sends,” he notes
on a break from mixing sound for Christine Santelli. “It’s very easy having
so many aux busses (12), which can also be used for group sends, but I
don’t use them this way. For a live recording send for video production,
I use the secondary mix output, and sometimes, for radio and the TV broadcast
recording, I use the matrix system. It’s a very complete console.”
The Jazz Club had the only MH3 in Montreux, but several samples of its
larger brother, the MH4, were bought by Hyperson for last year’s event
and made a return appearance in the Park Vernex, Club Rouvenaz, Casino
and on the Gibson stage. Bricchi added that the MH4 is one of the most
successful new mixers Günther has handled, having sold 12 in the year
and a half since its launch. While this might not at first seem enormous,
it has to be admitted that for a country with a population of only 7.3
million people and less than twice the size of New Jersey, it is actually
quite exceptional.
FOR POSTERITY
Stage circuits in the Stravinski and Miles Davis halls were all split
between the monitor and front-of-house desks and also send feeds to the
two mobile recording units from the French Le Voyageur company that were
parked outside. From the very earliest jazz festivals, Claude Nobs negotiated
with the artists that all concerts should be recorded, initially at Mountain
Studios that adjoins the casino, and there are rumors of vast archives
of unreleased material stored in his hillside vaults.
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David Richards of Mountain Studios was involved yet again this
year, mixing in Le Voyageur’s facilities with an immediate stereo
mix being used in the high definition television OB units. The festival
enjoys an international reputation and the material is distributed
to channels around the world. |
“Generally when a production is on a European tour, they insist on using
their own setup. Radiohead, for example, brought their own Series FIVE
desks to the venue.”
That aside, the influence of the festival’s “technical partners” - such
as Soundcraft, Shure and ‘official sound provider’ Meyer Sound - meant
that nearly all stages had sound systems based around similar brands and
components. The wide variety of venue shapes and sizes, including some
particularly acoustically challenging stages on steam trains and cruise
boats, gave these manufacturers ample opportunity to demonstrate the full
breadth of their product lines.
Aside from the large-format systems used at the Congress Centre, many
of the other ancillary locations made use of the much more compact LX7,
M12 and M8 mixers from Soundcraft’s Spirit range, vast quantities of wired
and wireless Shure microphones, and Meyer’s compact UPA-1P and UPM-1P
loudspeakers.
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While artists like Bonnie Raitt and Radiohead arrive with their own production team, for 95 percent of the acts, the task of mixing falls to one of the freelance team for whom Montreux has become a regular diary entry. Aldo Pedron, FOH engineer for Auditorium Stravinski, explained
it is quite common for him to learn he is to mix for a particular
artist only when no one else steps up to the board during the sound
check! |
CHILLING OUT
The nature of Montreux is that some of the most celebrated names seem
to be at their most relaxed, and such is the reputation of the regular
Swiss team; many artists seem entirely happy not to interfere with the
mix, sometimes not even bothering the engineer with details such as a
running order.
Many of the same crew returns year after year and Bernard Natier, who
for much of the rest of the year is a studio engineer, enjoys his annual
three-week booking mixing the live shows. This year I found him balancing
the rapping of Gift of Gab with the mixing of DJ Chief Xcel performing
as the duo Blackalicious with a quick turn around for more hip hop from
Cypress Hill. Natier finds Montreux’s changing styles with reggae one
night followed by folk or electro-pop another to be a refreshing challenge
for his undoubted versatility.
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Stage manager for the Auditorium Stravinski, Christoph Stahill
appreciated the efficiency provided by the regular teams who meet
up again each time, and Jimmy from the venue maintenance team used
the description of a ‘big family’ working together year after year.
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It was certainly refreshing to hear such a range of music tightly balanced
with plenty of impact but without feeling there was any risk of hearing
damage.
The monitor positions in the Miles Davis and Stravinski halls each had
Soundcraft FIVE Monitor desks and these both provided facilities for ten
channels of Shure radio receivers and a quite a few in-ear transmitters.
Staff from Günther’s technical department ensured compatible frequencies
were in use in the Stravinski, Miles Davis and Jazz Club venues which
adjoin each other in the convention center as well as extra channels for
in-ear monitoring and mic systems at other venues. None of the places
are totally outside radio range of one another.
As usual, the major halls were supplemented by the Festival Off outdoor
stages, which meant there were at least 16 different venues offering music
most of the time. These included workshop sessions covering such diverse
topics as Music in Education, Melodic Development in Improvisation, The
Horn Section in Reggae and the Big Band of the Montreux Jazz School offering
homage to Charles Mingus.
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Visiting groups from all over the world, including college bands and choirs from the U.S., provided the widest possible variety of styles. Assorted competitive events included the Shure Jazz Voice competition,
the White Foundation World Sax competition, the Time Solo Piano
competition and the Chrysler Young Swiss Jazz band contest. |
Peter Harrison is an independent pro audio consultant and freelance writer. He can be contacted via email at peter@phmusic.co.uk
December 2003 Live Sound International