{"product_id":"the_montreux_years","title":"The Montreux Years","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Montreux Years is a 2026 archival live collection that celebrates Roberta Flack through previously unreleased performances recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival between her debut at the event in 1971 and her final appearance in 2008. Curated in partnership with BMG and the festival, the album is issued on CD and double 180‑gram vinyl with new artwork, rare photos, and liner notes by longtime manager Suzanne Koga, and is part of the broader “Montreux Years” series honoring artists closely tied to the Swiss festival and its founder Claude Nobs. The tracklist showcases Flack at the piano with a small band, moving across soul, jazz, folk, and pop repertoire, and capturing how her approach evolved over nearly four decades while retaining the same poise and emotional precision.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReview notes emphasize that the album highlights Flack’s “quiet intensity” as a live performer: rather than showy vocal acrobatics, she stretches time, uses space, and lets small dynamic shifts carry huge emotional weight. Signature songs like The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Killing Me Softly With His Song, Feel Like Makin’ Love, and Reverend Lee appear alongside deep cuts and interpretations of other writers’ material, revealing both her command of her own classics and her gift for re‑inhabiting others’ songs until they feel like standards in her voice. Together, these performances offer not just a career overview but a kind of alternate history of Flack: less about the polished studio hits and more about the conversational, searching artist in front of an attentive Montreux crowd, renewing the songs night after night.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Record Store","offers":[{"title":"Vinyl \/ 2LP","offer_id":53704175714618,"sku":"39047","price":48.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/2041\/0682\/files\/Screenshot_2026-07-08_at_2.59.44_PM.jpeg?v=1783537302","url":"https:\/\/recordstore.ca\/products\/the_montreux_years","provider":"Record Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}