Today’s Montreux Jazz Festival is a colossal, fortnight-long event that encompasses the worlds of pop, rock and world music alongside the jazz that gave the festival its start and its name, back in 1967. It was the brainchild of the former chef, Claude Nobs, who had previously organised occasional concerts at the town’s casino. However, what he had in mind for the festival was too ambitious for one man alone to achieve. To get the festival launched, he and his colleague René Langel enlisted the support of one of Switzerland’s safest pairs of musical hands, the jazz pianist Géo Voumard. Bringing in world-class acts to the casino on the shores of Lake Geneva, Nobs, Langel and Voumard set in motion one of the most successful and long-running of all music festivals.

By the time of its launch, Voumard already had a 25-year career in music behind him. He was born in Biel, and originally planned to work as an architect, completing his formal training in neutral Switzerland as the Second World War raged outside its borders. However, Voumard was also a talented pianist, and as an amateur player he cut his first records in 1943 for the tiny Elite-Disc label in Zürich with the vibraphone player Flavio Ambrosetti. The following year he decided to follow his heart and play music for a living, abandoning architecture and joining the leading Swiss big band led by the trumpeter and vibraphonist Hazy Osterwald. He made numerous records with this group from 1946-48, in which year he formed his own band and launched his solo career.

Voumard was an elegant man, usually sporting a crewcut and neat goatee beard, and he was also a tasteful and elegant pianist. His trio recorded everything from jazz standards to easy listening, also making an album with strings, and he backed such visiting American stars as Lucky Thompson, Buck Clayton and Don Byas, as well as the French violinist Stéphane Grappelli. A recorded anthology released in the late 1970s celebrates his 25 years in jazz from 1953-77.

However, for much of that time Voumard was, in effect, an amateur jazz pianist as he had become a major figure in Swiss broadcasting. He joined Radio Lausanne in 1952 as a pianist, in-house composer and producer. When the station became Radio Suisse Romande, he progressed to become head of light entertainment. In this role he achieved what was to become his most popular success as the writer (with Emil Gardaz) of a string of entries for the Eurovision Song Contest. Refrain, sung by Lys Assia, won the first contest in 1956, and after producing a less successful sequel for her the following year (L’enfant que j'étais), he wrote the entries for Franca Di Rienzo in 1961 (Nous avons demain) and Esther Ofarim, who came second in 1963 with T’en va pas.

In 1982 the Montreux Jazz Festival honoured Voumard with a concert celebrating his 40th year as a jazz pianist, but the following year he retired from his RSR job, and more or less gave up playing the piano professionally. He moved to Provence, where he once more began working as an architect, before returning to Switzerland for the last few years of his life.

Géo Voumard, composer and jazz pianist, was born on December 2, 1920. He died on September 3, 2008, aged 87