Montreux Jazz Festival

Miles from Home - 5,181.1 miles
Firsts / Highlights - Montreux Jazz Festival, saw Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller & Victor Wooten (S.M.V.), saw Eric Lewis (ELEW), saw Quincy Jones back stage, saw George Duke & Chaka Khan, saw 4:00 am for the first time in a while.
Miles Ridden - 0 miles
Vertical Feet - 0 ft.
Route - No route today
People - Just me.


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This post is from July 6, 2009.



Today started as another long transportation day, but it turned into much more. It only took 2 trains to get from Finale Ligure Italy to Lausanne Switzerland on Lake Geneva. Now that I am traveling with my bike again, having fewer segments was a big benefit.

The first thing I noticed was how much cooler it was here. Lausanne is a little farther north and 1,500 feet higher than the Riviera. That makes a big difference.

There were three reasons I selected Lausanne as my next city to visit. First, Rick Steves recommended it highly. Second, the Montreux Jazz festival, only 20 miles down the lakeshore, was going on from July 3-18. Finally, I wanted to see Lake Geneva, and Lausanne is supposed to be one of the nicest cities on the lake.

I really did not know very much about the Jazz Festival, other than that I had been aware that it existed ever since my days of playing in high school jazz band. I sent an e-mail to my friend Cary Kocher who did some research and found that an exciting concert was going on Monday night (the night I arrived). The trio of Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten (S.M.V.) were scheduled to play. It is always dangerous, and pointless, to use the word “best” about musicians, but all three of these bassists are near the top of most people’s list of favorites. I had no idea how 3 bassists could play together, but the idea was intriguing. I have listened to Stanley Clark since the 70’s and have heard Victor Wooten play with Bela Fleck a couple of times. I did not know Marcus Miller, but Cary said that he was also amazing. Two problems. I did not have tickets and I did not arrive at my hotel (20 miles away) until 7:00 pm.

As soon as I checked in, I took a quick shower and hopped back on a train to Montreux. I didn’t think I had a very good chance of getting into the concert, but I thought the festival would be fun to see. I arrived in Montreux a little before 9:00 and the concert was scheduled to start at 8:30.

I found my way from the train to the Mile Davis Theater venue. A guy approached me with a ticket available before I could get to the box office. He said it was a reserved seat and he wanted 100 francs. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but the face value on the voucher he was holding was much higher. I told him to wait for a minute while I checked at the box office. I was told that the concert was sold out, but there were a couple of Standing-room-only spots available if I wanted one for 90 francs (those Swiss prices again). He told me that concert had 3 acts and the first one had just started. First up was Eric Lewis (Elew) second was S.M.V. and the late-night show was George Duke with Chaka Khan. The surprising good news was that I had options.

Now I had to decide whether to take the sure thing with the SRO ticket or take a chance with the scalper. I figured that regardless of whether or not it was a good seat, it was worth 10 francs if I didn’t have to stand for 4-5 hours. On the other hand, the home-printed voucher could be a scam, the ticket office might require I.D. to exchange the voucher, I could be arrested for scalping and I had no idea how the venue was arranged and whether I would be able to see the stage from this seat.

The motivation to not stand for 5 hours was strong, and I decided to take a chance with the scalper (although I’m not sure it is appropriate to call someone a scalper when they sell for below face value).

I went to the ATM machine to get some Swiss Francs and handed over his bounty. He took me to the ticket window and handed over the voucher and they put a band on my wrist. The ticket office cut out a portion of the voucher and gave it back to the seller, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

The seller ushered me toward the venue where he said, “have fun” and disappeared.

I wondered, “Okay, when is this deal going to blow up?”

I got to the front of the line and was asked if I had a reserve seat ticket. I said, ‘Oui’ (I'm multi-lingual, you know), but then realized that my wristband was generic and had no indication of a seat number. I thought, “Ahh, that didn’t take long, this is when it blows up. Oh well, at least I can get in for SRO and I only wasted 10 francs”.

Rather than give up right away, I went back up to the ticket desk and found the woman who had given me the wristband. She remembered the transaction and started looking through the trashcan for the voucher that had the seat number. She had a couple of urgent looking conversations with co-workers, and then signaled for me to wait a moment. She came around the desk and started leading me back toward the venue. I think she was planning to give verbal approval for me to go in, but when we got back the entrance, the seller was standing there with the voucher that included the seat number. Apparently, it was an honest mistake that he forgot to give it to me.

With the voucher in hand, I entered the venue. Eric Lewis was already performing, so I had to wait until the end of the song in the SRO area. It was a pretty cool auditorium because they were doing Hi-Def recordings of all of the shows and they had large screens on either side of the stage showing live feeds of the 2 fixed and 2 mobile cameras. It gave the visual experience of a DVD concert with the audio of a live show.

The voucher was in French, so I wasn’t sure exactly what it said. I could tell that it was seat #9, but I wasn’t sure what the ‘1’ meant. Was it a section number, level number, or what? It couldn’t be row 1, could it? When the song ended, the usher took me toward my seat. We walked to the front of the auditorium until we got to the front row. I thought, “wow, front row, not bad for a poached ticket. Seat 9 though, I’m sure it must be at a terrible angle”.

Actually, the center seat was #1 and they went up in even numbers to the left and odd numbers to the right. That meant my seat was forth to the right of center and stage was at eye level. Do you remember my definitions of luck vs. fortune? This was clearly a case of luck being on my side.

The rest of the Elew concert was an interesting new exposure. I could best describe him as a “primal” piano player. The band’s instrumentation was piano, drums, electronics and violin. The most distinctive physical characteristic for Eric was that he did not use a piano bench. He played standing, kneeling, crouching, everything but sitting. He was a very powerful player, although highly non-traditional. I really enjoyed it.



The S.M.V. trio came on at about 11:00. The question about how 3 bass players make a band was quickly answered. Very well. The full instrumentation was 3 basses (mostly electric, but Stanley played stand-up at the end), keyboards and drums. Marcus also played bass clarinet on a couple of tunes. They arranged their music with Stanley playing low bass, Marcus in the middle and Victor playing the higher end. They each had a different approach to playing the instrument, but all three were jaw dropping. You rarely hear bass as a lead instrument. You never hear 3 basses together



Stanley Clarke went to the microphone to greet the audience after the first couple of blow-your-hair-back songs. He gave the usual welcoming comments, then asked, “How does it sound out there? Up here, it’s sounding a bit ‘heavy’”. Considering the instrumentation, that got a good laugh.

The entire set was a thrill to watch.

From my seat, I could clearly see the wings on the right side of the stage. About half way through the set, there was a little commotion that took my eyes off the stage for a moment. The reason for the movement was that Quincy Jones had taken a seat to watch the concert from the wings. Apparently, wherever Quincy goes, some serious ass-kissing follows. I saw Chaka Khan and George Duke working him pretty hard, then a parade of other people trying to get a word with him. His presence was never announced, but I could tell that the musicians were aware that he was there. As they left the stage, they lined up behind each other to pay homage to the “Q”. Victor actually bowed as he shook his hand. Apparently Quincy is royalty.

S.M.V. has released an album called “Thunder” recently. If your sound system can handle it, you might want to add it to your collection. As a live concert, the bass was chest thumping. I’m not sure how many home sound systems could create the same effect.

I finally left Montreux at 3:00 am and got back to the hotel at 4:00. It was a late night, but a memorable one.

BTW – Since I have taken all of the pictures on this blog, I have to disclose that these are not my pictures. They were taken by the person sitting to my left with his iPhone and he was kind enough to e-mail them to me. I did not have a camera with me.