NINA SIMONE: LIVE AT MONTREUX, 1976 – A Legendary Performance on Film!

Powerful, vulnerable, passionate, painful, chaotic, transcendent, raw, real…words cannot describe “The High Priestess of Soul’s” legendary 1976 performance at The Montreux Jazz Festival. You just need to see, hear, and feel NINA SIMONE: LIVE AT MONTREUX, 1976.

A truly extraordinary record of one of the twentieth century’s greatest talents and mightiest voices, in both soulful song and indomitable activism, this film serves as an unflinching document of all that made Nina Simone such a singular and trailblazing figure in the annals of music history. Simone first broke into the popular consciousness in the late 1950s as an exceptionally gifted musician whose skillful piano, expressive voice, and distinctive blend of jazz, classical, gospel, and blues influences set her apart – and were foundational to the genre that would come to be known as “soul”. But it was one song, released in 1964, that showed the world just how bold and fearless an artist she was. In an era when popular Black recording artists were expected to simply smile and entertain for a segregated nation, her fiery and furious “Mississippi Goddam,” written in heartbreak and rage over the white supremacist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the M**der of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers, was one of the first explicitly political songs of its kind. Throughout the 60s, Simone established herself as a deeply authentic and uncompromising voice of love, hope, passion and pain, with classics like “Feeling Good” and the Black liberation anthems “To Be Young Gifted and Black” and “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”, while ever-expanding her style to incorporate folk, rock, and funk.

The performance that was filmed at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 19, 1976 took place at a particularly turbulent and challenging moment in Simone’s personal life and career. The years prior had seen her expatriation (in rightful disdain) from the US, struggles with finances and mental health, and the dissolution of an abusive marriage – all while navigating her sense of identity as both an artist and political figure during a time of intense social upheaval. Simone arrived at the prestigious Swiss festival directly from Liberia, where she’d spent three years on a spiritual sojourn, for her first major public performance since the early 70s. The polite audience was not, as evidenced by their frequent stunned silence, prepared for the raw, intimate, confessional nature of her performance – wherein, from one note to the next, even Simone’s shakiest moments suddenly ascend to heavenly heights. As ever, Simone’s presence is commanding and mesmerizing, here imbued with an unparalleled intensity and power that makes this one of the most remarkable live performances ever recorded. Its combination of naked fragility and ferocious strength embodies what makes Nina Simone, still, one of our greatest and most vital artists.

Dir. Jean Bovon, 1976, 78 mins, Switzerland, Unrated, English, Color, Digital.

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Host or Publisher The Philosophical Research Society