Founded in 1967 by ‘Funky’ Claude Nobs and partners Géo Voumard and René Langel, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland continues to deliver many of Europe’s greatest summer music highlights. Immortalised in Deep Purple’s classic ‘Smoke On The Water’, the MJF is traditionally hosted every July at the town’s Convention Centre, but when the building’s renovation made it unavailable for the 2024 festival, the opportunity was seized to take a new approach. This resulted in 15 stages being set along 2km of the Montreux lakefront, with an overall attendance of around 250,000 across the event. The pièce de résistance, however, was the 35m wide Lake Stage, or Scène du Lac, which was constructed by STAGECO Deutschland. Built below the Place du Marché, between the quays and the sparkling Lake Geneva, and offering a capacity of 5,000 people, this new stage gave audiences the chance to enjoy the breath-taking scenery alongside world-class performances by Sting, Duran Duran, Raye, Massive Attack and Kraftwerk among other top names. Arriving on-site with seven equipment trucks, STAGECO rose to the challenge of building a standard Boogdak 1814B (18m x 14m) stage in the actual lake, on a foundation of ramming piles that will remain in place for the 2025 edition. STAGECO project manager Manuel Billian explained: “Building in the water necessitated a seven-day load-in, because of the risks of wind on the shore and complicated on-site logistics, so this could never have been a quick ‘in and out’ task for our crew chief Levy Tichy-Rács and his team.” Manuel, who liaised directly with MJF production manager Jyothi Urso, continued: “We first constructed the centre platform in the water to have something to walk on and then craned in all the roof parts that had been preassembled on the land. After the towers were set, we finished the floor and railings, and the roof itself was then built in a regular way.” Among the many artists who expressed positive reactions to STAGECO’s creation was bassist Joe Dart from American funk outfit Vulfpeck. He said: “It’s easily the most beautiful stage I’ve played on... and the crowds here are connoisseurs, real music lovers.” The 59th Montreux Jazz Festival will be held from the 4th to the 19th of July 2025. [Thanks to Manuel Billian and Dirk Lauenstein for project background.] montreuxjazzfestival.com Marc Ducrest, Lionel Flusin, EmilienI Tim
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