Audemars Piguet Knows That Watchmaking & Music Are Deeply Connected
Somewhere in between Black Coffee spinning hypnotic deep house against a backdrop of the Swiss Mountains and trying on an excessive amount of collaborative Royal Oaks at Audemars Piguet’s Musée Atelier, it all clicked for me.
AP’s future is not just tied to its highly coveted watches but the worlds and communities it is creating through its curated musical experiences.
But, I am getting ahead of myself.
The Swiss watchmaker has always seemed to understand intuitively that music is a skeleton key, attracting pioneering figures in intersecting fields like art, fashion, and technology. I’ve seen this first hand, with Audemars' deep roots in hip-hop nurturing connections with some of my personal GOATs like Travis Scott and Jay Z.
And, I have watched those creative fellowships cause cultural ripples across the industry while also creating modern heirlooms.
Through the APxMusic program, Audemars Piguet is more dedicated than ever to building and expanding these communities — something I experienced first-hand at the annual Montreux Jazz Festival and the elusive Audemars Piguet Parallel experience.
Hôtel des Horlogers and Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet
Audemars Piguet’s Hôtel des Horlogers, situated in Le Brassus, Switzerland was the perfect opener to my week with the watchmaker. Any watch nerds will tell you that Le Brassus is hallowed ground, deeply connected to the lore of AP.
The hotel feels like a direct extension of the surrounding valley, everything from the materials used throughout the hotel to the food prepared were sourced from the surrounding area.
It is minimal but not in an obnoxious or pretentious sort of way: saplings hang from the lobby ceilings, concrete walls are left exposed, and giant windows frame the jaw-dropping surrounding nature. It’s a calming space, the type that invites deep pondering, and the topic of contemplation this week was how watchmaking and music connect.
The relationship between music and watchmaking may seem overtly obvious to some. They both rely on time, no? On the surface, you could argue that mastery of watchmaking and musical melodies both require years of practice and precision. Or, for all the technical advances we have out there, both disciplines are analog at their core.
But, Audemars Piguet’s connection to music is more organic, deep-rooted, and even "rhythmic". And this was all on full display at the building next door, the famous Audemars Piguet Musée Atelier.
In the Bjarke Ingels-designed space, we were greeted by a slew of AP’s most historic watches, a museum walkthrough soundtracked by Jay Z’s The Blueprint album on vinyl.
Sure, the watch nerd in me was happy it got to see different variants of the minute repeater complication and my holy grail, the equation of time, but the collaborative watches were the highlight.
Hidden away and guarded like an MI6 safe-house, was a special room (some call it the “Candy Room”) filled wall to wall with some of the most coveted watches in Audemars’s history. The new Travis Scott chocolate AP? Done. Oh, you want to try on that new John Mayer piece with that crazy celestial dial? Easy.
Seeing the watches in the room and across the museum, reaffirmed my suspicions about AP. The 149-year-old watchmaker understands that watches have always been at the forefront of major cultural moments, worn by the cultural leaders who brought about these shifts.
It was the perfect overture for what was to come.
Claude Nobs and Montreux Roundtable Chats
The musical connection was more overtly presented during the second half of the trip during a visit to Claude Nobs’s Chalet and my round-table chat with Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet, and Mathieu Jaton, the CEO of Montreux Jazz Festival.
For the uninitiated, the late Claude Nobs is the OG founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Nobs was that guy, a man whose life mission was to put Montreux on the map by attracting the best musical talent in the world — something he no doubt achieved.
Nobs's chalet is a living museum with each level of the multiple-story home having multiple totems from historical figures, legendary musicians, and prominent artists — people whose work has directly impacted us in some form or another.
Personal Letters from my hero Quincy Jones, one of Freddie Mercury’s famous kimonos, Carlos Santana’s guitar in the foyer…the chalet is littered with pieces of musical history that even unexcitable music obsessive Anthony Fantano would get a kick out of.
We were shown glimpses of famed festivals of the past, where I found myself fixated on artists like Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, and Aretha Franklin. Honestly, seeing black artists (artists I serenade my Sundays with) who have not only shaped the course of music but have shaped the Montreux region and festival as a whole got me into my feelings a bit.
Aside from AP's direct connections to the festival, Audemars Piguet has been contributing to the Montreux Jazz Digital Project since 2010. In collaboration with the Claude Nobs Foundation and EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), the team is working on the digitalization of all the historic musical moments from the Montreux Jazz Festival, audiovisual archives, acknowledged by UNESCO as part of its “Memory of the World” register.
The technical avenues the partners are exploring to enrich these archives are worth a whole article on themselves. But, let’s just say there could be a time when you could place yourself at Prince’s 2009 Montreux Jazz Festival closing performance using virtual reality.
Though Audemars Piguet has been working on the Montreux Jazz Digital Project for some time, they only recently became a Global Partner of the musical event (2019). And hearing Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet, and Mathieu Jaton, the CEO of Montreux Jazz Festival during my round-table chat, it was clear this isn’t your run-of-the-mill marketing push for increased exposure.
Jean-Michel BasquiatArt is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.
Experiences like the one presented this year will be a core component of the Audemars Piguet universe and the communities that are eager to be a part of it. There is a hunger for experiences and marquee cultural events, more than ever, especially among younger collectors curious about horology.
New collectors are looking to be inspired. Audemars Piguet and Montreux Jazz facilitate that x10 and, from the sounds of it, are just getting started.
And there is no better example of this than during the crescendo of my trip at the Audemars Piguet Parallel experience.
The Audemars Piguet Parallel experience
Packed into a sprinter van with people dressed to the t, wearing watches I am sure would make any collector green with envy, we made our way to a secret location in Les Pléiades.
Waiting for me and a lucky group of 600+ people, was the musical talents of the Swiss trio Mont Rouge, the electronic prodigy Mochakk, and a personal hero of mine, the legend Black Coffee.
The outdoor experience in the mountains came complete with probably one of the most memorable sunsets while overlooking the Lemanic Basin. AP gets +10,000 aura points for just that alone.
Sure, the event included some friends and family from AP (I got to see the Gstaad Guy’s iconic grimace in real-time) but the people in attendance at the event won access to this exclusive free experience through a lottery ticket system.
This on top of the last-minute reveal of the location added a refreshing depth to the overall experience, beyond just being another place for influencers to network.
This connection AP has to music, something consistently conveyed to me and other editors on the trip, made the most sense while dancing to Black Coffee surrounded by fellow music lovers having the time of their lives during this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Perhaps it was the bottomless gin tonics we had access to or being 4,500 feet above sea level, but the Audemars Piguet Parallel experience as well as the week spent with AP made me recall that one quote from Jean-Michel Basquiat about art and music.
“Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”
Music is a staple in our lives and musical experiences like these are often markers in time embellishing our memories. Whether it’s looking to create a new underwater minute repeater, fostering a creative collab with one of my favorite musical artists, or building sonic experiences out in the Swiss mountain tops, AP understands this at its core.
Watchmaking, at the very least, the watchmaking coming out of AP Le Brassus workshops, does connect with music in more ways than one.
Eager to check out the latest and greatest in the watch world? Be sure to stop by our Highsnobiety Watch Guide or pick up a few watches in our Highsnobiety shop. In the meantime, have you seen the insane sports watches at the Olympics?
