With the sun setting over steep green mountains and dark blue waters, one might imagine that Audemars Piguet had taken us to Malibu. Think again! Turning around, you absorb the series of rustic yet grand chalets that once made up the residences and recording studios of Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, on the shores of Lake Geneva. It’s not just the views, or the tables laid with cheese, that make this a faintly surreal evening – we’re also taken into Claude’s very own listening room to watch Prince sing “Purple Rain” in HD, streamed through 24 speakers. Meanwhile, wandering around the chalet, there are photos of Nina Simone, David Bowie (who had dinner in the kitchen) and a series of solemn-looking Bernese Mountain dogs. And this isn’t even the main event. I’m here to see RAYE on the opening night of Montreux Jazz Festival’s 60th anniversary edition, in a one-off show supported by Audemars Piguet.

The Swiss watchmaker is in its second year of collaboration with the artist, who combines both virality (“WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”) with an insane range and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Motown history. “I think the journey of this show is very different from anything we’ve done before,” says RAYE of her opening evening, which she titled Moments in Time. “It’s very different from maybe what I would have done if it was just me in a London show. Don’t get me wrong, I love that, but this had to be special and specific in detail. So a lot of that creative process has been really, really digging into the greats, and a lot of research into moments in time.”

The bespoke live performance was part of Audemars Piguet’s APxMusic programme, which focuses on creative collaborations with artists and unique live performances. Held at the Stravinski Auditorium, a space known for its acoustics, RAYE took to the stage in the round, with a rotating platform that, she admitted, was inspired by an AP watch. Opening with Nina Simone’s version of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”, a Sandy Denny track last played in Montreux 50 years ago to the day, she then took the audience through a patchwork of songs, both her own and historical, backed by a full band, and at one point, accompanied by none other than her hero Alicia Keys. “I wanted to open the show really powerfully,” said RAYE. 

This kind of unexpected collaboration, rooted in both the classics and the contemporary, is the kind of space Audemars Piguet is trying to carve out with the APxMusic programme. They’ve been Montreux Jazz Festival’s global partner since 2019, working with talents from mainstream names (Mark Ronson) to more club-facing corners of music (German electronic label Keinemusik). The through-line is less about genre than atmosphere: a desire to put musicians in slightly unexpected contexts and see what happens. “I've been to many, many concerts,” says Audemars Piguet’s CEO Ilaria Resta, “but honestly, I remember everything about the night two years ago when I was watching RAYE. You [RAYE] removed your shoes, you were jumping up and down on the stage with this white dress, and everybody had goosebumps!”

For Resta, that performance made RAYE feel like a natural fit. “We want to engage in creative dialogues with musical talents,” she continues. “We say we are in the business of emotion. We are useless. Nobody needs a watch, but we need the emotion of what’s around the construction of that watch… You’ve been to Claude Nobs’ chalet. What is that? It’s an emotional package, where you see people coming together with no barriers, boundaries, creating together, thinking together. What’s more beautiful than that? So I think this is the magic [of our collaboration].”

On the night itself, RAYE, of course, goes out on “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”, which inspires both heightened emotions and a cascade of vigorous ring finger-waving in the crowd. The sense, at least from RAYE, is that this may not be her last encounter with Montreux’s archive. “I was lying on the floor of the tape room [of the Claude Nobs chalet], and it’s insane, you wind a little wheel and it opens up, and you have rows and rows of tapes that I haven’t explored yet. I’m a huge Count Basie fan, and I’ve told them I’m coming back for the day just to listen to all his tapes.”

After the concert, there’s an afterparty until the small hours, where I get a music history lesson from Benji B, ending in a late-night jam session in a secret corner of the lakefront club. “I feel a sense of duty to, or responsibility to do this correctly on behalf of Montreux and Audemars Piguet and myself,” says RAYE. “It's the 60th anniversary, it's the most legendary stage – you can't just get up there and just sing a bunch of your songs! For me it had to be really intentional. We chose the title Moments in Time because I'm somebody who loves to say what it is on the tin. Because my album’s called This Music May Contain Hope! I really enjoy that, and I think once we found that title together, it was really important that we honoured that.”