Meyer Sound Celebrates 40-Year Partnership as Montreux Jazz Festival Turns 60

When Claude Nobs met John and Helen Meyer in Switzerland in the 1970s, he was already a decade into building what would become one of the world’s great music festivals. John was directing the acoustics laboratory at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies; Nobs had built Montreux Jazz around the conviction that sound was as central to the experience as the music itself. The friendship was immediate. In 1986, Nobs asked Meyer to transform the festival’s listening experience—guided by a principle the two already shared: Artists deserve to sound their very best. 

This summer, the Montreux Jazz Festival celebrates its 60th edition, and Meyer Sound marks 40 years as Global Official Sound Partner. This “60/40” anniversary places the partnership among the longest of its kind in live sound history—and among the most creatively fertile. Montreux has functioned as a working laboratory across four decades; the MJF-212™ stage monitor, introduced in 2006 and named in the festival’s honor, is one measure of how deeply the two organizations have shaped each other. That tradition continues in 2026 with TIGRA, Meyer Sound's newest line array, set to make one of its earliest festival appearances at Montreux. As the festival extends its reach into new global markets—China, South Africa, Miami—under the leadership of CEO Mathieu Jaton, Meyer Sound is alongside it, continuing to define how those experiences are heard. 

In the video, Meyer Sound founders John and Helen Meyer and Senior Director of Product Management Andy Davies discuss what four decades of shared purpose looks like—and what Helen Meyer says made the partnership inevitable from the start: “He and John really clicked. They knew that they had something magic—Claude loved music and John loved the technology.”

The full 2026 Montreux Jazz Festival lineup is now available at montreuxjazzfestival.com/en/programme.