Montreux Carves Out Niche With Eclectic Mix

Montreux is not a group that’s easy to pin down. Named after a town in Switzerland, the members actually live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Identified, variously, as a New Age ensemble, a jazz group, a pop group and a contemporary instrumental band, Montreux’s players move merrily from one record to the next, playing the music they like best, and caring not a bit about labels.

“Yeah, we do present a lot of looks in our music, don’t we?” laughed guitarist-mandolinist Mike Marshall in a phone conversation earlier this week. “It’s kind of like a composer’s cafeteria.

“But we’ve always believed that it was possible to have four or five strong personalities and shift roles from being leader to sideman as we played different pieces. And it seems to work.”

Well enough, apparently, to make Montreux, who appear at the Wadsworth Theatre in Westwood on Sunday, one of the few groups to break out of the restrictions of New Age labeling into a broad audience acceptance. Organized, almost casually, by Marshall, pianist Barbara Higbie and violinist Darol Anger for one of Windham Hill’s concerts at the 1984 Montreux Jazz Festival, the ensemble--with a few personnel changes--has carved out an identity that is virtually defined by its determined folk-based, jazz-tinged, bluegrass-seasoned eclecticism.

Higbie, who spent part of her high school years in Ghana, brings yet another strong element to the mix. “I approach the band and the music,” she explained, “with some of the attitudes I learned from African music--as a very communal creative experience, in which there’s not a lot of stress put on one hero out in front of the others. Most of my music I write focuses on the idea of people playing together and creating as an ensemble.

“The thing about this band, and our approach to fusion, is that we really feel strongly about the need to play music by integrating it in our bodies and having it be a part of us, rather than by saying ‘Oh, we’re into African music, or Brazilian music, or whatever, and we can play this instrument or that instrument.’ ”

Marshall took Higbie’s thought a bit further: “I’d like to think that our eclectic approach to music helps get the message across that different cultures can live and work together. It’s time, it’s always been the time, and music is an excellent place to start.”

Remarkably, Montreux’s dedication to musical variety doesn’t seem to have hampered the group’s commercial success, despite the trend toward over-categorization in today’s music marketplace.

“Hey, we’re getting more radio airplay than any of us ever dreamed of,” said Marshall. “We always thought of this stuff we play as being very far left, really weird music--our own trip. But I’ve always felt that if the music is really happening, the audience will be there.”

Earlier this year, Anger, one of the founding members, left Montreux to concentrate on his work with the Turtle Island String Quartet. Rather than replace him, the members decided to focus on working as a quartet--with Michael Manring on bass and Tom Miller on drums and percussion. The result has been a perceptible shift in Montreux’s sound.

“Adding a drummer has made a real difference,” said Marshall. “We’ve always tried hard to simulate drums in our music. But now that we’ve got a real drummer, a light bulb has gone off--’Oh, this is why every other kind of music has percussion.’ The interesting thing is that it seems to have given us a leaner, more ensemble-oriented quality than we’ve ever had before.

“What gave Montreux its sound in the past was that everybody had a voice, everybody played the lead at a different time. And it sometimes was difficult to arrange the music so that it made sense. We’d go from a mandolin to a steel drum to a piano to an electric bass playing melody.

“Good as it was, it had its restrictive qualities. But now, in a lot of ways, we can really breathe.”

Higbie agrees. “I think we’re on the right track. Especially since everybody finally realizes that, despite the name, we’re an authentic American music group. Even my mother. She keeps asking me when I’m going to get a real job. But I just tell her it’s too late now.”