Prince to headline Montreux Jazz Festival

American singer Prince will be a headliner at the Montreux Jazz Festival this July, his first appearance at the famed Swiss music festival since 2009.

The Purple Rain singer has been on the comeback trail of late, with anappearance at the Grammy Awardslast Sunday and a series of mysterious releases of new music online.

Prince will play three concerts at Montreux this summer, which marks the first edition since the death of festival founder Claude Nobs after a skiing accident.

Nobs founded the Montreux festival nearly 50 years ago. The 76-year-old died in January after having spent several weeks in a coma. This years festival will be held as a tribute to him, with the remaining Montreux lineup expected to be announced in April.

Prince's online presence

Though he spoke out against the internet in 2010, refused to release songs on iTunes and shuttered his website, Prince has recently returned to the web with new music.

Along with a new website, he has released a live video version of the track Screwdriver and is shown backed by an all-girl band. He's created new accounts on Twitter and YouTube under the moniker 3rdeyegirl, which is testing the waters for his new music. He has also performed at a series of surprise concerts in his hometown of Minneapolis.

Prince made his first appearance at Montreux in 2007. He released his song In A Large Room With No Light as an audio stream during the 2009 edition of the Swiss jazz festival, where he also gave one of the first-ever live performances of the track, which he had written more than 20 years earlier.

This precedent has lead fans to speculate he might once again release previously unreleased or new material in time for this summer's shows. The 2013 Montreux Jazz Festival runs July 5-20, with Prince performing on July 13, 14 and 15.