The very first Montreux Jazz Festival closed with a legendary set by Charles Lloyd, who returned triumphantly at this year’s 60th edition of the festival.

Between those two performances sits everything the festival has since become: a two-week musical city extending along the shores of Lake Geneva, hosting some of the greatest artists in modern music at some of their most memorable moments.

Charles Lloyd at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2026. Photo supplied

Search “Montreux” in your streaming service and you will find legendary recordings by Nina Simone, Miles Davis, David Bowie, Prince and countless others.

This year’s opening concert by Raye made that relationship between occasion, performance and history unusually explicit. Her third consecutive appearance at Montreux was a journey through six decades of music, interweaving her own songs with reimagined classics, collaborations and direct acknowledgement of the Montreux artists who shaped her.

The result was both celebration and application: an artist sufficiently conscious of the history around her to engage with it, but sufficiently self-possessed not to be overwhelmed by it.

Already available to watch again, it has begun the transition from event into artefact — from something experienced by a few...