THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Smile’s exceptional concert at the 56th Montreux Jazz Festival has been immortalised on a live album. The Smile At Montreux Jazz Festival July 2022 is the second official album by the trio, which includes Radiohead musicians Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, with drummer Tom Skinner.
The 2,000 privileged people present at the Montreux Jazz Lab on July 12 can testify to this: Yorke, Greenwood and Skinner were on fire that night. After having played each song with a constant urgency, The Smile finished the concert with Bending Hectic, an unreleased song written during their stay in Montreux. This epic composition is now part of their live favourites, having been played more than 20 times since.
“This is the continuation of a beautiful story between Thom Yorke and the Montreux Jazz Festival, after Radiohead’s mythical passage in 2003 and his sublime solo concert at the Auditorium Stravinski in 2019,” says festival CDO Mathieu Jaton. “I like to think that this history, as well as the quality of our teams’ hospitality and the excellence of our audio-visual recordings have contributed to this magical moment, which is one of the long line of legendary concerts immortalised in Montreux.”
By releasing their Montreux Jazz Festival performance, The Smile follow in the footsteps of the likes of Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Wu-Tang Clan, Nile Rodgers and scores of other iconic artists. The festival has a long-standing history of hosting legendary moments in music culture, as a platform offering creative freedom to artists.”
