With an unchanged line-up stretching back to 1969 and global album sales in excess of 50 million, ZZ Top continue to delight fans around the world with brilliant live concerts and great music. The band has made a number of visits to Montreux over the years and this concert from the 2013 Festival is undoubtedly one of their finest live performances. The set list blends tracks from early seventies albums such as Tres Hombres and Fandango through their eighties blockbuster period with Eliminator and Afterburner and up to their most recent release and return to their blues roots with La Futura . The middle section of the concert features a jazz-blues tribute to the late Montreux Festival founder Claude Nobs with guest appearances by Mike Flanigin on Hammond Organ and Van Wilks on guitar. ZZ Top, the lil ol band from Texas , are rocking the blues as strongly as ever!
Santana were founded in the late sixties and came into the spotlight following their appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969. Their eponymous debut album was released the same year and became a global success, introducing the public to the bands unique blend of latin rhythms and guitar based rock. With legendary guitarist and band leader Carlos Santana at the helm, hit albums and singles followed through the seventies, eighties, nineties and up to the present day. Both Carlos and the band have been frequent visitors to Montreux over the years and in 2011 they presented a stunning concert of their greatest hits, classic album tracks and brilliant cover versions from their debut album right up to 2010s Guitar Heaven. The is the ultimate Santana live concert and absolutely not to be missed.
Inarguably one of the most important figures in 20th-century American music, jazz impresario Norman Granz introduced live jazz to mainstream audiences with his Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series, founded four record labels including the legendary Verve Records, managed the careers of icons Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, and produced a roster of some of the greatest artists in jazz history: Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Bud Powell, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, and many more. In addition, Granz was dedicated to fighting racism in America by refusing to play to segregated audiences, paying his artists well above average, and offering equal benefits to both black and white musicians all in the mid-1940s to late 1950s, years before the prominence of the burgeoning civil rights movement.
Miles Davis and storied producer/arranger Quincy Jones shared a long friendship and working history, despite the jazz trumpeter's legendary reputation as an intimidating and difficult collaborator. Their last partnership comes to light Tuesday in Miles Davis With Quincy Jones and the Gil Evans Orchestra Live at Montreux 1991, a concert from the Montreux Jazz Festival captured shortly before Davis died. Evans died in 1988.