Montreux II Montreux II Montreux II is a live album by jazz pianist Bill Evans with Eddie Gómez and Marty Morell, recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1970 and released on the CTI label. The album was the second of Evans' Montreux concert recordings to be released, following the Grammy Award-winning "Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival" (1968). The Allmusic review by Ken Dryden awarded the album 3½ stars and stated, "While this is a terrific live performance, there are sound problems, including what sounds like bleeding of the stage monitors into the mix, and there are muddy
Montreux Jazz Festival highlights of this era were Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Evans, Soft Machine, Weather Report, The Fourth Way, Nina Simone, Jan Garbarek, and Ella Fitzgerald. Originally a pure jazz festival, it opened up in the 1970s and today presents artists of nearly every imaginable music style. Jazz remains an important part of the festival. Part of the festival's expansion was due to coproduction by Quincy Jones who brought many international artists in the early 1990s. Today's festival lasts about two weeks and attracts an audience of more than 200,000 people. In the 1970s, the festival began broadening its