MONTREUX SOUNDS

Montreux Sounds was founded in 1973 by Claude Nobs. Thierry Amsallem, Claude Nobs' longstanding partner since 1986, is today its President and CEO. The company managed until 2013 the organization and artistic direction of the Montreux Jazz Festival, first under mandate from the Office du Tourisme de Montreux (OTM), then from 1996 from the Fondation du Festival de Jazz de Montreux (FFJM), as well as the TV, radio and physical distribution of the concerts.

Montreux Sounds owns the Festival's audiovisual productions between 1967 and 2013, with various coproduction arrangements over the period — notably with RTS for many concerts between 1967 and 1986, and with the FFJM for the 2013 edition. An exceptional collection of "live" music recordings, starting with jazz in the early years and diversifying across genres ranging from blues and rock to soul, Latin, rap, world music and many more.

From 1974 onwards, with the agreement of the artists, publishers and record companies, Claude Nobs initiated more than 300 record releases on vinyl and CD — produced by Montreux Sounds. In 2004, alongside Eagle Rock Entertainment (now Mercury Studios), Montreux Sounds launched the global series « Live at Montreux », now continued under exclusive licence by Mercury Studios — distributing performances by more than 150 major artists in DVD, Blu-ray, streaming and VOD. Since 2019, Montreux Media Ventures, in partnership with BMG, has also released around a dozen LPs from the collection within the « The Montreux Years » series, drawing mostly from concerts in the 1967–2013 period. In total, more than 500 audio and video releases have been published from the Claude Nobs – Montreux Jazz Festival audiovisual collection.

In June 2013, the audiovisual collection produced by Claude Nobs at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1967–2012) was inscribed by UNESCO on the international Memory of the World Register — under the official title « The Montreux Jazz Festival — Claude Nobs' Legacy », the documentary equivalent of « World Heritage ».

Today, the Claude Nobs Collection comprises more than 4,000 concerts captured between 1967 and 2012.