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Elton John to play Montreux Jazz Festival as part of farewell tour

Pop legend Elton John is to include the Montreux Jazz Festival in the venues he plays during his farewell tour that starts this September.

Published: 25 January 2018 10:04 CET

Elton John to play Montreux Jazz Festival as part of farewell tour

Photo: MJF

John, who announced on Wednesday he was planning to stop touring and spend more time with his family, will perform at the 53^rd Montreux Jazz Festival on June 29^th and 30^th2019, the festival said in a news release.

The annual Montreux Jazz Festival attracts big names to the banks of Lake Geneva every summer but it is the first time the hugely successful performing artist will grace the stage there in a career spanning five decades.

The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour will begin in the United States and comprise more than 300 shows across five continents before it concludes in 2021.

“Elton’s new stage production will take his fans on a musical and highly visual journey spanning a 50-year career of hits,” the festival said.

Elton John is one of the world’s top-selling solo artists and has sold more than 300 million records worldwide.

He holds the record for the biggest-selling single of all time, “Candle in the Wind 1997”, written to mark the death of Princess Diana, which sold over 33 million copies.

On Monday the musician was honoured with the Crystal Award for this long-standing fight against HIV/AIDS at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Tickets for the concerts go on sale from July 14^th and are available from the Montreux Jazz Festival website and Elton John’s website.

France's Fête de la musique 'will go ahead, with masks and a curfew'

Photo: ABDULMONAM EASSA / AFP

Culture minister Roselyn Bachelot, taking part in a Q&A session with readers of French newspaper le Parisien, confirmed that the annual summer festival will go ahead this year on its usual date of June 21st.

The festival date is normally marked with thousands of events across France, from concerts in tiny villages to huge open-air events in big cities and street-corner gigs in local neighbourhoods.

Last year the festival did go ahead, in a scaled-down way, and Bachelot confirmed that the 2021 event will also happen, but with restrictions.

She said: “It will be held on 21st June and will not be subject to the health passport.

“People will be able to dance, but it will be a masked party with an 11pm curfew.”

Under France’s phased reopening plan, larger events will be allowed again from June 9th, but some of them will require a health passport (with either a vaccination certificate or a recent negative test) to enter.

The Fête de la musique, however, is generally focused around lots of smaller neighbourhood concerts.

The curfew is being gradually moved back throughout the summer before – if the health situation permits – being scrapped entirely on June 30th.

Bachelot added: “I appeal to everyone’s responsibility.

“The rate of 50 percent of people vaccinated should have been reached by then, so we will reach an important level of immunity.”

The Fête de la musique is normally France’s biggest street party, with up to 18,000 events taking place across the country on the same day.

It’s hugely popular, despite being (whisper it) the idea of an American – the concept is the brainchild of American Joel Cohen, when he was working as a music producer for French National Radio (France Musique) in the 1970s.

By 1982 the French government put its weight behind the idea and made it an official event and it’s been a fixture in the calendar ever since.

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