About the Claude Nobs Foundation

The Claude Nobs Foundation is a Swiss public-interest foundation dedicated to the legacy of Claude Nobs (1936-2013), creator of the Montreux Jazz Festival. It is the custodian of the Claude Nobs Collection of the Montreux Jazz Festival (1967-2013), inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. It was created in 2013 by Thierry Amsallem, partner and universal legatee of Claude Nobs.

A legacy and a Collection

Claude Nobs conceived and created the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967, co-founded it with Géo Voumard and René Langel, and led it as Founder and Artistic Director throughout 46 editions. From the very first edition, he had the concerts filmed with Swiss Television and recorded. From 1988, Claude Nobs and Thierry Amsallem sought out, recovered and brought together these recordings, scattered across broadcasters, studios and tape stores. The result is the Claude Nobs Collection of the Montreux Jazz Festival: more than 4,000 concerts recorded in audio and video, on some 14,000 tapes, with more than 11,000 hours of video and 6,000 hours of audio.

Montreux Sounds SA, the company Claude Nobs founded in 1973, holds the producer's rights in its productions and co-productions of the Festival: jointly with Swiss public broadcaster RTS until 1986, alone from 1987 to 2012, and jointly with the Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation for 2013. In 2016, Montreux Sounds donated its master tapes to the Foundation, which holds an exclusive worldwide licence for non-commercial uses of the Collection: cultural, educational, scientific and social. Any publication of a recording also requires the agreement of the artists and of their record companies.

Beyond the Festival, the Foundation's mission covers the wider work of Claude Nobs, including the music productions he organised for the Golden Rose of Montreux and Super Pop Montreux.

UNESCO Memory of the World

In June 2013, the Claude Nobs Collection of the Montreux Jazz Festival was inscribed, for the years 1967 to 2012, on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, the documentary counterpart of World Heritage, under the title “The Montreux Jazz Festival, Claude Nobs' Legacy”. The nomination was led by Thierry Amsallem. The Claude Nobs Foundation is the institution named on the certificate signed on 18 June 2013 by Irina Bokova, then Director-General of UNESCO.

The Montreux Jazz Digital Project, with EPFL

In 2007, Claude Nobs, Thierry Amsallem and Patrick Aebischer, then President of EPFL, launched the high-resolution digitisation of the Collection, designed from the outset for both preservation and research. The first petabyte was reached in 2010. Since 2016, the Foundation has carried this work forward within the Montreux Jazz Digital Project, with the EPFL Cultural Heritage & Innovation Center. Preserved on 14.5 petabytes of storage, the digitised Collection has become a resource for students and researchers in acoustics, data science, archiving, musicology, museology and neuroscience. In 2017, Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple and Tutu by Miles Davis, both recorded at Montreux, were among the first music recordings stored in synthetic DNA; the Foundation is a member of the DNA Data Storage Alliance. Since 2024, under an agreement between EPFL, the Foundation and the Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation, the project also preserves the Montreux Jazz Festival Collection (2014 editions onwards).

The Claude Nobs Chalets

The Foundation is based at the Claude Nobs Chalets in Caux, above Montreux, where artists have been welcomed since 1982. Its President continues to receive artists, researchers and partners there, in the spirit of Claude Nobs. The Foundation is sustained by the personal commitment and resources of its President, with the support of Audemars Piguet, its main donor, and of foundations, companies and private donors.

Contact

Cultural, educational and research projects, and non-commercial uses of the Collection: info@claudenobsfoundation.com. Commercial enquiries: Montreux Sounds PRO, www.montreuxsounds.com. Credits and rights holders: see the Communication and Attribution Charter.