TBGS Jazz Band at the Montreux Jazz Festival

 

Nestling on the shores of Lake Geneva, Montreux is so beautiful it almost feels as if it is part of an unreal picture-postcard vision of a Swiss landscape: surrounded by steepling Alps mirrored in the mill-pond calm of the lake, it is a vision of perpetual serenity. Well, almost; for once every year Montreux is transformed into the capital of the jazz world when it hosts the month-long, internationally renowned Jazz Festival, now in its 41 st year. The TBGS Jazz Band, having submitted an audition CD, were invited to take part in this year’s festival and travelled in July to appear on the open-air stage as part of the Under the Sky programme. Following months of fundraising by Mr Sears and the band, 19 musicians and three members of staff set off in a mood of excited anticipation on the long coach journey to Montreux.

Their hopes were not misplaced as the trip featured a superb performance by the band before an appreciative and knowledgeable crowd. Mr Sears had assembled a wide-ranging programme which mixed standards (‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside’) with latin (‘The Girl from Ipanema’), fusion (‘Chameleon’) and even jazz renditions of rock classics (‘Born to be Wild’) to produce a programme which had the large audience enthralled from beginning to end of the 90-minute set.

For any jazz musician to be able to say that they have played at Montreux is a real achievement: for a school band to hold its own in such illustrious company is something of a triumph and the successful trip to the festival is a notable high point in the distinguished history of music at TBGS. Well done boys and many thanks to Mr Sears for organising it.