Montreux Jazz Festival expands to China amid tight coronavirus restrictions in its homeland

It’s October 2021. Thousands of jazz fans mingle beside a world-famous lake in a city steeped in history as one of Europe’s premier music festivals bursts exuberantly into life after having been silenced by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Montreux Jazz Festival is back – although not just in its traditional home, on the shores of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, but also alongside West Lake, in Hangzhou. The famous event, whose past performers have included Nina Simone, BB King and Ella Fitzgerald, is being given a new lease of life in China.

In a world turned upside down by Covid-19, the half-century old festival is being held in a reduced, online-offline format in Switzerland in July, with a maximum audience size of 600, after being cancelled altogether in 2020. However, live audiences of up to 6,000 people and an online audience of up to two million are expected for its China debut, from October 4 to 8.

Around 20 bands will perform live over the five days in Hangzhou, while foreign bands and musicians will have recorded concerts using 360-degree immersive audio technology that will be shown on stage at the festival.

Seventy per cent of the acts performing live will be Chinese, the remaining 30 per cent Western musicians based in China. Acts so far confirmed to appear either live or digitally include Laura Fygi, Lawrence Ku and Luo Ning, as well as Hong Kong (or Hong Kong-born) trio Eugene Pao, Alan Kwan and Teriver Cheung.

Organisers hope this will be the first of many Montreux Jazz Festivals to be staged in China and say that, when travel is possible again, the percentage of overseas live performers will be around 70 per cent of the total in what should become an annual event.