This article is part of our coverage of the Montreux Jazz Residency 2024.

This year's edition is open to the public and features mentors like Theo Croker, Moses Boyd, Emanuel Harrold, Angélique Kidjo, Jeff Mills, Manou Gallo, and Macha Gharibian. Also on the bill are showcases by Harold Lopez-Nussa, Rosa Brunello, Enrico Terragnoli, Louis Matute, Amine Mraihi, as well as concerts featuring Marlin, Matters Unknown, Dan and the Dynamite, Freekind., Mel D, Reinel Bakole, L'Osmose, and Pipya and the Gang Band.

For more information, visit the Montreux Jazz Festival website.



Since 2018, the Montreux Jazz Festival's Residency has invited promising musicians from around the world to Switzerland for workshops, talks, improvisations, live performances, and jam sessions. Supporting budding talents and bringing out the full potential of their creativity is the main goal of the event which organically grew out of the activities of the Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation.

That said, as Eduardo Mendez, press officer of the event tells me, it is ironically a recurring workshop with an entirely different thematic focus which is among the most popular items on the program for many musicians: During a short, but intense course, a lawyer breaks down the basics of taxation for artists, helping them deal with the financial realities of their job.

A weird choice? Not at all, according to jazz vocalist Courtney Cutchins:

“[Although] I’d of course love to see more support for the music through grants, tour funding and educational opportunities, support in business skills and entrepreneurship could also help highlight new possibilities for thinking outside-the-box.”

This thinking outside the box, in a nutshell, is one of the main pillars of the Residency which started out as a sidethought to the renowned Jazz Festival but is slowly but surely gaining traction as a meaningful concept in its own right.

Although getting to know more about tax law may indeed be a valuable proposition. But of course, it is not exactly what the Residency is really about. When I asked German singer, and saxophonist Mieke Miami about her biggest musical wish for the future, her reply encapsulates the event's mission perfectly: “I would love to see jazz thrive and become more relevant again.”

She is not the only one. In fact, it is a wish I have found repeatedly amongst creatives. And judging by the enthusiastic response to performances at events like the Xjazz Festival in Berlin, which I visited this year, many listeners share the sentiment.

At the same time, the economic impact of jazz is so insignificant as to feel meaningless.

In terms of album sales and streams, jazz takes up just 1% of the market, dangerously close to being non-existent.

Similar to classical music, to which it has sometimes been compared and with which it undeniably shares a certain percentage of listeners, the decline has been gradual, but seemingly unstoppable. And similar to classical music, it has proven hard to identify the exact reasons for the downward spiral.

Especially since there has hardly ever been a better time to be a jazz fan over the past roughly twenty years, than right now. While streaming provides easy access to a magnificent canon of classics and high quality pressings of legendary recordings have never been easier to come by, new scenes with distinctly fresh and local perspectives on the genre are mushrooming everywhere. From California to London, from Berlin to Tokyo, from South Africa to South America, the supply of global inspiration feels endless.

At the same time, things are not getting any easier for musicians. The financial realities for the industry at large have long trickled down to those trying to eek out a living in this corner of the musical spectrum for themselves. The main issue is not so much a lack of interest as a lack of balance: Whereas you can potentially play every single night in front of a small, but appreciative audience in Berlin, few of these gigs will actually be paid. On the other hand, as several artists have told me, Vienna may be one of the few major cities which pays its artists decent wages – however, concert opportunities are in turn far harder to get by. Both cities, too, are plagued by fast rising costs of living and a difficult housing market.

Classical music has never had any qualms about investing into its future and aiding artists. This is because, for much of its history, it has been the recipient of generous financial injections without which its expensive infrastructure could never have survived. At least in Europe, institutional support for orchestras, ensembles and soloists, concert halls, festivals, and concert series runs into the millions. Similar programs are also in place in other parts of the world, including the “Systemas” of the South American continent.

Jazz, on the other hand, is often perceived as either not deserving, or not requiring this kind of help - or, worse, of even being antithetical to it. Classical music, the reasoning seems to go, is part of our shared cultural heritage – jazz is an effort of confronting it.

The Montreux Jazz Residency is an effort of countering this logic.

Just like the musicians invited to the festival's legendary main event, those invited can spend four days with like-minded colleagues, play and learn, or simply enjoy the breathtaking scenery of a town idylically sandwhiched in between the water and the mountains. From the organisors' point of view, the  goal is to support young artists early on in their career, nurture talents, and to give them memories which can help them through hard times. They also have the hope of discovering unique artist personalities which can really make a difference and take the music forward.

To understand what the Residency is, it is important to stress what it is not: A mere adaptation of the masterclass system so archetypal to the classical music scene to the world of jazz.

As part of these masterclasses, artists get to spend time with established instrumentalists, singers, or conductors to hone their craft – sometimes in private, but quite often in front of an audience as well. Masterclasses can be rewarding, even transformational experiences, not just in classical music. To this day, those present at guitarist Robert Fripp's Guitar Circles speak highly of them and often single them out as impulses which convinced them to  choose a career in the arts. Still, time at these classes is often highly limited, and their results depend on the skills of the “master” to truly engage with the students - rather than merely correcting “mistakes.”

The masterclass approach has gained traction in jazz as well. Today, masterclasses from towering figures like Herbie Hancock can be bought and streamed online, for example, or can be part of the regular curriculum. The thing is, for the most part, a masterclass is simply a lesson with a great artist - but more lessons don't seem to be what artists with an interest in jazz are really interested in. In fact, what they are after is something far more internal, as Jasmine Myra, a former participant at the Montreux Residency told me:

“[My development as an artist] was a challenging process for me, and I often felt very lost and frustrated. Having said this, it was vital to my development and has led to me being able to write music that feels true to myself. I’ve always believed that it’s important to have authenticity as an artist, which is something that sounds simple but often working out what this means to you can be tricky.”

Even in the classical community, where masterclasses are widely accepted and can be valuable career markers for many younger instrumentalists, overcoming the need for such classes can be more important than the events themselves.

Says violinist Esther Abrami:

“As classical musicians, we learn everything from the score, we have a very intellectual approach to music, nothing is learnt by ear. The real breakthrough for me, when it comes to interpretation, was when I went to the Manhattan School of Music for an exchange and had jazz lessons! Suddenly, having to understand a flow rather than a metronome, learn how to improvise, to learn a melody by ear … It changed everything!”

Macha Gharibian, one of the invitees at this year's Residency similarly remarks that, after starting out as a classical musician, it was improvisation which led her to her personal voice and allowed her to “mix up all my influences, from classical to contemporary, Armenian, Eastern Europe and pop music.”

Transgenerational Dialogue

Of course, the Montreux Jazz Festival itself already features a plethora of young artists. The Residency, however, focuses particularly on the transgenerational dialogue between those are starting their journey into music and those who have already travelled far.

The thought is that encouraging those with an interest in the arts and expression through sound should ideally take place as early as possible. Director of the Next Generation Women in Jazz Combo and curator for the Monterey Jazz Festival, bassist, composer, and improviser Katie Thiroux, for example, is encouraging young females to forge a path in jazz and is even working closely with schools to this end. The creative, practical route is what sets this approach apart from the traditional master-apprentice idea, as Thiroux stresses:

“I would say the biggest success for each edition has been how quickly they make music together. It is a real world situation that I would be in as a professional - fly to a gig, meet the band and perform, all in a few hours! The other success for me is seeing where they go after. Many of them are at schools in New York City and playing a few nights a week. To see them doing their thing on stage performing is what is remarkable!”

This is exactly the concept behind the Montreux Residency as well. The point is that it is not so much through knowledge that we make our biggest advances as artists, but through encounters.

Mendez points out that for those present at the event, one of the most fascinating aspects is observing the artists presents in the morning and afternoon loosely or conceptually discuss ideas and play with each other, take in the insights and experiences from their mentors, which include people like Angelique Kidjo, Jeff Mills, Theo Croker, Moses Boyd, Emanuel Harrold and Manou Gallo – only to then put them into practise during the long, expansive nightly jam sessions. “Sometimes, you can hear certain themes and motifs integrated into these sets,” he recounts.

Croker, who, together with Boyd, and Harrold, conducts a workshop on “Innovation in Black Music, Past, Present, and Future” this year, mirrors this exactly when I speak to him about what actually welds a band together on stage:

“When you're playing with cats, you know ... once you establish a certain raport from spending time together, travelling together, eating together, breaking bread together, you know, cutting loose together, exploring together. manoeuvring through different cultures together … once you do all that stuff together as a band, you become a unit and you start to express things together because you live in the same experience. And you start to play that way.”

In many ways, jazz is about opening the gates, and flipping a switch. You could say that the program is just there to facilitate this. It is at events like the Montreux Residency that artists can finally stop worrying about the future for a few days - and focus on what they do best.