There are festival headline sets… and then there are moments people will still be talking about years later. And a moment happened at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
RAYE opened the 60th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival with a one-night-only performance created especially for the occasion, turning the festival’s opening night into a celebration of both her own music and Montreux’s extraordinary history.
And she didn’t do it alone.
Just twenty minutes into the set, Mark Ronson walked on stage unannounced as the pair launched into Uptown Funk before performing their collaboration Suzanne together.
Later in the evening came another unforgettable moment. Alicia Keys joined RAYE on stage for the first time the two artists have ever performed together live, with the pair sharing beautiful renditions of If I Ain’t Got You and Oscar Winning Tears inside a packed Auditorium Stravinski.
The performance itself was unlike a traditional festival headline slot. A specially designed rotating stage sat in the middle of the audience beneath sweeping suspended sails, creating an immersive setting for a show that celebrated six decades of Montreux through music.
Throughout the evening, RAYE paid tribute to some of the festival’s most legendary performers, weaving songs associated with Nina Simone, Prince, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles and Al Green into her own set. There were also appearances from her sisters, Absolutely and Amma, making the evening feel deeply personal as well as a tribute to the festival itself.
Montreux has become an important place in RAYE’s story. She first performed there in 2024, when her Swiss grandfather watched her perform live for the first time, before returning in 2025 to headline the Lake Stage. This year’s show felt like the natural next chapter, celebrating not just where the festival has been over the past 60 years, but where RAYE’s own journey has taken her.
If opening one of the world’s most respected music festivals wasn’t enough, sharing the stage with Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson in a performance created exclusively for Montreux made it a night that will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the festival’s defining moments.
You can find out more about the festival here!
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