For two weeks every summer in Switzerland, the shores of Lake Geneva metamorphosize into a stage for the Montreux Jazz Festival. Since its inception in 1967 by founder Claude Nobs, the likes of Etta James, Kendrick Lamar, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, James Brown, Leonard Cohen, and Elton John have gathered to perform at the annual fever dream of music.
While the festival at first hosted exclusively jazz artists, it began to broaden its horizons in the Seventies and flourished as a hub for all genres when the late Quincy Jones joined as co-producer two decades later. Under his stewardship, from 1991 to 1993, Jones helped grow Montreux to welcome nearly 250,000 artists and visitors every year, fostering a gathering place for the world’s most promising musicians and industry greats alike to flex, explore, and celebrate their art.
Impassioned by his own experiences at Montreux, Grammy-winning composer and pianist Jon Batiste decided to bring the storied festival to the beaches of Miami. “My love for Montreux was really fostered by none other than the great Quincy Jones,” the maestro tells Rolling Stone, recalling how he would travel with Jones to Switzerland where the beloved producer would regale him with “countless stories about co-producing the [original] festival in the 1990s with Claude Nobs.”
“I really miss Quincy for what he did… He was an exporter of the culture to the world and ambassador, and now in this era, we need to create a new culture. We have to build these hubs for it back on home base, and start to fuel the next generation to become great,” says Batiste.
After last year’s inaugural Montreux Jazz Festival Miami, Batiste has brought the event back for its second iteration and this time, he will be joined by Janelle Monáe, Chaka Khan, and Willow. British singer-songwriter Griff — who has spent the past few years opening for Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and Sabrina Carpenter — will also take the spotlight and burgeoning multi-instrumentalist Justin Lee-Schultz will open for Jon Batiste and Friends. As headliner, Batiste will perform alongside a grand 20-piece band on opening night.
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The fest will take place on Feb. 28 to March 2 at the Hangar in Coconut Grove, a massive 20,000 sq. ft waterfront venue. Chucho Valdés, known for his monumental work in Afro-Cuban jazz, prolific percussionist Sammy Figueroa, and Emily Estefan will take part in the “La Descarga” jam session on Sunday, which will be co-hosted by Cimafunk and Batiste and boast a packed lineup including Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Paquito D’Rivera, Aymee Nuviola, Hamilton de Holanda, and Brenda Navarette.
For Batiste, innovation while holding reverence for those that came before has been a constant throughout his career. His historical performance at Super Bowl LIX was the first to weave a sample during the national anthem, with Batiste weaving the Triggerman beat into his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
When considering the future of Montreux and Jones’ extraordinary commitment to surpassing musical boundaries and bridging generations, Batiste hopes to continue his work and “provide blueprints for things that allow for you to take them and apply them in your community, in your corner of the world.”
He explains, “That’s a beautiful thing that happens when you you use these really big and meaningful national moments as the stimulus for things like this, because it allows for you to not only just have an impact in a moment, but it allows for you to use all of this extra energy and extra economic power to move something forward for a longer period of time than what this community would ever have had the opportunity to access.”
“When you go to a place, you don’t just skim through it, you go deep,” says Batiste. “For me, that also has a reverberation, because people who participate in that and people who gain a sense of momentum from that event continue with that momentum in the days to come, in the months to come, in the years to come.”
