Montreux Jazz Festival... 2009

Off to Montreux Jazz Festival tomorrow night for the freebie stuff, that's to say swilling draught Swiss beer from plastic cups while listening to one of several high-school bands from USA playing Glen Miller or Benny Goodman classics, other compositions, maybe their own, and watch the odd solo effort by an enormous kid, the size of a small elephant in a school uniform...

Usually though, these high school or university jazz bands are excellent. There's even one or two from the UK this year, so we'll pop along and have a listen...

But the middle weekend is dedicated to all things Brazilian, although less football more music. And a lot of very good looking slim brown skinned women in shorts or tiny skirts and a bikini top often made out of the Brazilian national flag. Saturday night is Brazilian Night with capital letters and the samba bands, the salsa bands and almost anyone with either a trumpet, that they are half good at, or congas, timbales (bongos as I collectively call them), will be out there in the balmy evening park air playing along too.

Sometimes the resulting discordant noise can be a bit much, but as No.2 son's girlfriend is Brazilian and currently living with us, we thought we'd go ensemble if you will and see how it's really done... In addition to that, her percussion teacher is flying in from Brazil and will be appearing at the Jazz Café so I might go along as a groupie.

in the meantime I thought I'd post a picture of some characters I spotted at the festival a few years ago... a couple of curly haired, very bearded American chaps with a nice line in head scarves...