The American singer closed on Saturday evening, with her family, the European chapter of her final tour.Story of a concert that a final hesitation made more humanIt needed a hit to open the festivities, and it was inevitably I'm Coming Out, taken from the album Diana, released in 1980 and which remains the biggest success of her career.Written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, alias Chic, this disc had made Diana Ross, pop-soul icon of the Motown label in the 1960s, a disco queen.After a martial and solemn introduction led by her 14 musicians and singers, here she comes on stage, sketches a few dance steps and rocks her hit.On the two giant screens framing the stage, the covers of some 44 albums that she has published since Meet the Supremes in 1962 have just scrolled.The Auditorium Stravinski is overheated, between the excitement of hearing a well-known hymn and the emotion of seeing a singer who remains one of the last great legends of black American music.Saturday evening at Montreux jazz: Diana Ross, “the boss” foreverOn July 3, 1976, Nina Simone gave a concert at the Casino that entered into the mythology of the Jazz Festival.The interpreter of My Baby Just Cares for Me has performed five times in Montreux, as has Ella Fitzgerald.And while we no longer count the appearances of Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin has only sung once in Vaudois lands.The list of African-American singers invited by the Montreux Jazz Festival (MJF) is long: we also come across the names of Etta James, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Patti LaBelle or Natalie Cole.Finally, that of Diana Ross comes to register in the wall of fame of the MJF.His concert was expected, like that of Stevie Wonder in 2014.This July 9, 2022, the native of Detroit therefore started off with the ecstatic I'm Coming Out, before moving on to More Today Than Yesterday, a track recorded by the Californian pop group Spiral Starecase in 1969, and which she resumes because he perfectly embodies the one and only message that she seeks to convey, she who has always kept away from political debates: peace, love and fraternity.“I love you all”, she launches as a first exchange with the 4000 spectators of Strav '.Follows an impressive series of titles recorded between 1964 and 1968 by The Supremes, the female trio in which she started and which will become Diana Ross & the Supremes since she shone there more than Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard: My World Is Empty Without You, Baby Love, Stop!In the Name of Love, You Can't Hurry Love and Love Child.Fivefold proof of the genius of Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, who, thanks to the contribution of composers and producers as prolific as they are talented (the Holland-Dozier-Holland trio, the Nickolas Ashford-Valerie Simpson duo), made of his label a formidable machine with tubes.Read also: Diana Ross in five albumsOn the screens, twinkling hearts and the word “love”.On stage, Diana Ross invites three little girls, before heading backstage to swap her black dress with colorful patterns for another more puffy one and in fluorescent yellow that has its effect – she will change at the end of the concert a second time.Here is Chain Reaction, offered to him by the Bee Gees in 1985, before a tribute to the blue notes “since we are in a jazz festival”.It will be Don't Explain, a title by Billie Holiday, once recorded for the soundtrack of the film Lady Sings the Blues, produced in 1972 by Sidney J. Furie and in which she played... Billie Holiday.This restored biopic last year earned her a Golden Globe for revelation and an Oscar nomination for best actress.We will later be entitled in a medley to an extract from Ease on Down the Road, which she sang with her friend Michael Jackson in The Wiz (Sidney Lumet, 1978, kitsch musical adaptation of the Wizard of Oz), then to Do You Know Where You're Going To, a ballad popularized by Mahogany (1975), the only film directed by Berry Gordy.Alongside these three feature films, Diana Ross has shot two TV movies.With The Supremes, she appeared in 1968 in an episode of the Tarzan series.After her promising debut as Billie Holiday, her hesitant performances in The Wiz and Mahogany sounded the death knell for a potential film career.The end of the concert is approaching, and that's when his headphones play a dirty trick on him.Already at the beginning of the concert, we saw Diana Ross telling her technicians that the feedback was not strong enough.Suddenly, at the very moment of starting Do You Know Where You're Going To, here is that she doesn't hear herself at all.His voice is quavering, it is no longer very fair.We then remember that unlike the great divas who rely only on their virtuosity and their vocal power, the American has never been a great singer.His greatest talent, beyond his natural charisma, has always been to become an instrument among others, to become one with the music without trying to dominate it.Its excellent musicians and singers are there to hold the house.Ain't No Mountain High Enough, this Motown classic she recorded in 1970, three years after Marvin Gaye, is unfortunately also a bit dull and hesitant.But paradoxically, from this revealed fragility, Diana Ross will manage to make a strength, bringing the concert to an unexpected end.When she sings I Will Survive, stolen from Gloria Gaynor, she brings all her children and grandchildren up on stage.Her European tour was done with her family, and she wants to say that she loves her tribe and to share this moment with her.We wonder what we are attending, it's a bit crazy, it looks more like a private meeting than a concert.Here she explains that this is her last performance before her return to the United States (and therefore the last European show of her career since she has announced that she is taking leave of the stage), that 'following aeronautical problems, suitcases were misplaced (“I have no other dresses to wear”) and certain musicians arrived shortly before the concert, which prevented the traditional soundcheck from being held.She apologizes and hopes the audience enjoyed the evening nonetheless…Read also: On the stages of festivals, the unforgivable absence of womenIt was then that she sat down, recalling that she was 78, and had the playback of a track from her latest album, Time to Call, sent because she wanted us to listen to it.She then ends with the title song of this disc developed during confinement, the aptly named Thank You.She thanks her family and those around her, makes those who accompany her on stage and behind the scenes applaud, and underlines that without her fans she would never have been able to lead such a long career.She is moved, so are we.While at the start everything seemed to be on track, ultra-calibrated, American-style, this final hesitation gave a more human touch to this concert that Montreux had been waiting for a long time.Subscribe and receive the newsletters of your choice.See the list.