Roberta Flack's 'The Montreux Years' reissue spans 37 years of shows

A new archival release, "The Montreux Years," gathers Roberta Flack recordings made between 1971 and 2008, a 37-year span drawn from five concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The collection is out now on 2LP audiophile vinyl, CD and digital streaming through Montreux Jazz Festival/BMG.

Flack was one of the defining voices in jazz-inflected R&B and soul, known for her command of slow tempos and for hits like "Killing Me Softly With His Song" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." She won four Grammy Awards and collected 14 nominations between 1973 and 1995, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Flack died in early 2025, and this set arrives as one of the fuller documents of her decades performing at Montreux.

The earliest recording here comes from June 1971 at the Casino Kursaal, a venue that burned down later that same year. Flack was 34 and had only recently joined the Atlantic roster on a tip from Les McCann, backed by a band that included Richard Tee on Fender Rhodes and Eric Gale on guitar.

The set also includes later performances from 2005 and 2008, among them a version of "Killing Me Softly" recorded with keyboardist Sheldon Becton that shows little strain in her voice even in her early seventies. Liner notes from her longtime manager, Suzanne Koga, describe how Montreux founder Claude Nobs insisted on capturing every performance on tape, even after Flack herself asked early on that her shows not be recorded. The full festival archive now holds roughly 4,000 recordings.

"The Montreux Years" is available now through Presto Music in all four formats.