In 1978, the Montreux Jazz Festival collaborated with a Brazilian team to organise the first Festival Internacional de Jazz de São Paulo/Montreux, which took place in September in the South American megalopolis, two months after the Swiss edition. Promoted by a joint poster designed by Walter Ono, which advertises the two events through a play of mirrors in the form of axial symmetry, this collaboration is the first in a series of twinnings between Montreux and foreign cities that will mark the history of the festival throughout the 1980s.
After the one in São Paulo, renewed by a second replica in 1980, the Montreux-Detroit International Jazz Festival was held the same year, in the American cradle of Soul and Funk; then it was Sapporo’s turn in 1986, followed by Atlanta in 1988. Looking back at these twin events is to touch on an essential part of what has made the reputation of the Montreux Jazz Festival on the international cultural scene.