Muse, Lana del Rey, Sigur Ros, PJ Harvey, Jean Michel Jarre, Neil Young, Patti Smith, and Santana. It sounds like the line-up for a major rock festival. But those are just some of the names announced this week for the 50th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, set to run from June 30 to July 16.Festival director Mathieu Jatton is clearly keen to showcase the rich history and impact of jazz with the line-up, which also includes heavy metal group Deep Purple, Texan blues rock legends ZZ Top, and thrash metal band Slayer.“We are thus presenting today's big names, but also friends of the festival who have helped make it great,” Jatton told reporters who gathered in the picturesque Swiss town of Montreux for an announcement which “has been drawn up to echo the festival's layered history, dense and lively.”- Artist Greg Léon Guillemin has created a series of artworks for the event – Click “Slideshow” for more.Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young will headline the main stage on July 12, 15 years since his last appearance, with Jatton describing Young as the “a truly monumental figure on the music scene, [a] godfather of the punk movement, then of grunge.”There are jazz acts too though. At the very first festival in 1967 American jazz musician Charles Lloyd topped the bill, and he returns to perform at the 50th, along with two pianist from two generations of jazz – Jamaica’s Monty Alexander (now 71) and Cuba’s Alfredo Rodriguez (30).Rodriguez is considered a Cuban Quincy Jones prodigy, so it’s just as well that the American producer, composer and Grammy Legend Award-winner will also be there. Other jazz greats on the bill include guitarist John Schofield, singer Al Jarreau, Lisa Simone, and England’s Jamie Cullum.“This anniversary is the occasion to underscore what drives the Festival: an insatiable desire to 'be there', up close and personal, under the spell of music,” say the festival organizers.Deep Purple’s performance will be particularly resonant, their biggest hit “Smoke on the Water” is about a fire that happened while Frank Zappa performed at the 1971 Montreux Festival, which takes place by Lake Geneva.The founder of the festival Claude Nobs saved people from the blaze, and is name-checked in the line “Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground.” Nobs died in 2013. Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank, will be playing a mixture of his own music and his dad’s at the event.For more information: http://www.montreuxjazz.com
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