The equestrian world will follow in the footsteps of the world’s greatest musicians when it celebrates the winners of the FEI Awards at a new-format ceremony in Montreux, Switzerland on 7 November.
The Montreux Casino (now the Casino Barrière Montreux), the venue of the FEI Awards ceremony, hosted the world-famous Montreux Jazz Festival from the late 1960s to 1993. It also housed Mountain Studios, the recording facility the British band Queen liked so much that they bought it and whose clientele included Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones.
The FEI, the world governing body of horse sport, set up its five-category awards in 2009 to reward outstanding individuals from the global equestrian community.
The winners of the FEI’s Longines Rising Star, Reem Acra Best Athlete, Development, Best Groom and Against All Odds awards will be photographed by Edouard Curchod, a local photographer who has immortalised most of the artists who have performed on the main stages of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Curchod’s photos grace DVDs of musicians as diverse as Miles Davis and Simply Red.
Rock band Deep Purple wrote Smoke on the Water, their biggest worldwide hit, about an incident that occurred at a Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux Casino in 1971. The song tells of how a fan fired a flare gun, which set the casino ceiling on fire, causing the show to stop, the hall to be evacuated and led to the destruction of the entire venue. The casino was rebuilt and opened its doors again in 1975.
The Montreux Jazz Festival began in 1967 as a three-day event to entertain international delegates of the Rose d’Or, the Golden Rose Festival of Television. It quickly morphed into a two-week event with a line-up of legends from all musical genres. Prince and Sting are among the many performers at this year’s festival, which ends on 20 July. The festival has since 1994 taken place at the Montreux Music & Convention Centre (2m2c), where the FEI General Assembly 2013 will be held.
Representatives of the FEI’s 132 Member Federations will be among the guests of the FEI Awards ceremony that will end the General Assembly.
Nominations for the FEI Awards 2013 close on 31 July. For further information and to make nominations, please visit www.feiawards.org.
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