Vulfpeck at Montreux Jazz Festival: ‘It’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen’

Vulfpeck, the Michigan-based funk group famed for their virtuosity and slick, polished production, originally formed with a shared desire to emulate super-tight West Coast session bands of the 1960s and 70s, such as The Funk Brothers and The Wrecking Crew.

Their 2014 Sleepify project, in which they asked fans to stream a silent Spotify track while they slept, generated enough streaming revenue to fund a free national tour and established a cult following which has endured through subsequent album releases and tours, spin off groups and affiliated projects. 

Vulfpeck fans are zealously committed. Online forums dissect recordings and live shows with academic scrutiny and coordinate itineraries to shadow the group on world tours. This year they performed at Montreux Jazz Festival for the first time and the anticipatory buzz was palpable, not least because of the festival’s formidable legacy.

“When I was growing up I was watching videos of artists live at Montreux; 1970s and 80s funk and fusion groups like George Benson and Weather Report,” Vulfpeck’s bassist Joe Dart tells me when I chat to him backstage on the Montreux Riviera ahead of their performance. “Then I show up here and it’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. For me it’s like a ‘made it’ moment, you know? It’s one of those big bucket-list check boxes.”

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One reason the archive footage of previous Montreux headliners is so compelling is the commitment the festival has always had to extremely high-quality sound and video recording. This is a legacy of its founder, Claude Nobs, who was famously pedantic about using the best audio and visual technology available to capture every performance.

The Montreux Jazz Festival archive holds recordings going back to the 1960s, meticulously filed and stored, many of which have been released on LP and become classic albums in their own right. My dog-eared copy of Marlena Shaw Live at Montreux still sounds as vital as it did decades ago.  

Their vast collection of filmed footage is equally captivating and this year, in addition to many other free access events, the festival constructed a dedicated screening room showing past performances from the likes of Patti Smith, Marianne Faithfull, Sinéad O’Connor and Toots & The Maytals providing a welcome reprieve from the occasional spectacular storms interrupting the otherwise balmy weather. 

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Another legacy that Claude Nobs left behind was his infamous hospitality and deference for the musicians playing at the festival. “I can tell the reverence for music and musicians here is so high,” Joe tells me. “And the Swiss hospitality is real. I mean, ever since we got here, everyone’s been seeing to it that we have a good time. We rented a little pontoon boat, we went out on the lake, we jumped in the middle and had this panoramic view of the mountains and the castle. I can’t ask for much more than that.”

That spectacular view formed the backdrop of the festival’s main stage this year, the Lake Stage, where Sting, Air, Massive Attack, Jon Batiste and Michael Kiwanuka soundtracked picture-perfect sunsets over Lake Geneva. Vulfpeck, supported by YouTube busker-turned electronic hip-hop sensation Marc Rebillet, bounced through a set of new and classic material, blending sleek yacht rock with saccharine Sesame Street soul; Dart assailing his bass with Olympic finger strength, everybody on stage and in the crowd having an absurdly good time. 

At one point guitarist Theo Katzman left the stage and reappeared, still playing, on the balcony of a top-floor apartment building opposite. To see a band playing so tightly, with such luminously superior sound quality, in such an outrageously beautiful location is typical of the ‘pinch-me’ moments Montreux Jazz Festival has managed to retain, despite its inevitable evolution since the 1960s. There really is no other festival that comes close. Dart agrees. “If I were coming to see a band live,” he says, “this is kind of as good as it gets.”

Vulfpeck’s members have various other creative pots on the boil: keyboardist Jack Stratton manages the band and is also active in mixing and production; Dart contributes to several other groups, including one called the olllam whose sound incorporates elements of Irish folklore. 

Vulfpeck’s next release, he informs me, following on from 2022’s Shvitz, will be a live album. If they manage to recapture the magic of their Montreux set it will be a gift to superfans and casual admirers alike. 

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