As part of an ongoing project, Montreux Jazz Festival and music company BMG have partnered to bring us fortunate listeners a host of new records mined from the Jazz Festival’s vaults. The first two projects to come to light feature Nina Simone and Etta James. A powerful one-two punch if ever there was one.
Mastering engineer Tony Cousins was also brought on board along with MQA to bring these live recordings to life. A labor of love and skill. Here’s Cousin’s on the task at hand:
The audio quality of some of these recordings was extremely variable. Added to that, the different formats of the original recordings included: 1/4″, 1/2″, DAT, U-matic, 1” Betacam, and sometimes to multi-track for mixing later, some from a feed to the mixing desk, others were taken from Swiss radio broadcasts. The analogue audio was mostly transferred to the archive at 96k, but sometimes there were completely different artists to what was labelled on the boxes – the archive is so massive, there are obviously going to be mistakes. On top of which, there might be big long gaps when the tape machine stops, or there’s a hiccup on it!
And here’s Cousins’ again, this time on MQA:
With the Nina Simone record, it felt to me like I’m in the room with her. Which is the point. The more lifelike it is, the better it is in my estimation.
Nina Simone The Montreux Years fills two LPs (16 tracks) or two CDs (30 tracks) with performances from five legendary Montreux concerts – 1968, 1976, 1981, 1987 and 1990.
Etta James The Montreux Years features recordings from James’ Montreux Jazz Festival concerts in 1977, 1978, 1989 1990 and 1993, also filling double discs.
While there’s no word on what’s up next from the 55-year Montreux Jazz Festival catalog, performers include Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, James Brown, Kendrick Lamar, Leonard Cohen, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, and many more. Gulp.
You can pre-order Nina Simone and Etta James The Montreux Years from the Montreux Years website. Both records share a release date of Friday, 28 May 2021 and will also be available for hi-res streaming via Tidal.
More information: MQA