27 March 2013

Switzerland

Re-uploaded by request 3/18/2023
 




  
Could hardly journey through Switzerland searching for musick without stopping by Montreux, a municipality in the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud, located on Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps.



The Montreux Jazz Festival, started in 1967, is probably the preeminent jazz festival in the world. It was begun by Claude Nobs, Géo Voumard, & René Langel with considerable help from Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegün, the heads of Atlantic Records. The first festival was held at Montreux Casino & lasted for three days, featuring almost exclusively jazz artists. Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Evans, Soft Machine, Weather Report, The Fourth Way, Nina Simone, Jan Garbarek, & Ella Fitzgerald highlighted the 60s festivals. In the 1970s the festival opened to other types of music & today presents artists of nearly every imaginable music style. Jazz remains the main focus of the festival. Today's festival lasts about two weeks. It currently attracts an audience of more than 200,000 people.

But what about jazz bands from Switzerland? One of the best was formed by Willy Bischoff in the mid 70s. Bischof had studied at the Zurich Music Academy from 1965 to 1967. From 1970 to 1973 he studied musicology, sociology & journalism at the University of Bern. Starting in 1969 he worked at the Swiss Radio DRS , first as editor, then later as Head of Music.
 


 
Bishop first played keyboards in the S & L Group Ltd. From S & L Group Ltd. the Willy Bishop quartet emerged. Then he teamed up with Peter Candiotto - saxophone, Christian Geiser – bass,  & Marc Hellman – drums & formed the jazz-rock group Tetragon, which was the most successful Swiss jazz group in the second half of the 70s.

Appropriately, a Swiss jazz quartet recorded at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival.
 

 Tetragon – Live at Montreux '77, Schnoutz Records – 6326 935, 1978. 
decryption code in comments

Seite 1 –
Jekyll Hydes
Crisis – What Crisis?

Seite 2 –
Gäng Zwäg
Polo

Dig this,

2 comments:

  1. I have nice memories of listening to jazz albums recorded at Montreux Jazz Festival when I was growing up {Nigerian Marketplace by Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans at the MJF, etc.) so Tetragon Live at Montreux sounds great if a reup is still possible. I had not known about Tetragon before so as always I appreciate the new bands I am learning about from your amazing blog. Thank you again! Now back to my musical pilgrimage across Europe... :)

    ReplyDelete