Saint-Tropez has spent decades selling the same idea of itself: yachts, rosé, a certain kind of studied glamour. JC Murray’s Isabelle Festival is drawn from something else: grief, a shark conservation thesis, and a grandfather’s dinner party that got wildly out of hand. Isabelle launched in 2024 and is staged inside the Citadelle, the fortress on the hill above Hotel Byblos overlooking the town and the sea. It’s an unlikely venue for a music festival, all stone ramparts and centuries-old architecture, but that contrast is the point: an international lineup, set against a 16th-century backdrop with the water visible from nearly every angle. The vibe splits the difference between a music festival and a private party at someone’s house; big production, but built for a crowd in the thousands rather than tens of thousands.
JC Murray’s Myriad Inspirations for Saint-Tropez's Isabelle Festival
BY TY GASKINS July 22, 2026
The festival is named after Murray’s mother. “She had so much class, elegance, and glamour, which is a lot of what Saint-Tropez is about. I try to keep that essence alive through Isabelle,” he says. For a year, he hid his intention to name the festival Isabelle from her—until the night of a 2023 party at his house that would become the festival’s real starting point. “She was very emotional about it.” Two weeks later, she passed away.
Isabelle was a marine biology graduate, a scuba diving master, and an advocate for shark conservation. “She loved sharks. She loved the ocean,” Murray says. “The day she passed, she had just finished a 194-page thesis on marine biology and shark protection.” That work is part of why Isabelle Festival now supports Fundación Malpelo, an organization dedicated to protecting sharks and ocean ecosystems.
Music was hers too, long before it was his. Murray remembers her blasting songs on car rides, turning them into impromptu karaoke sessions. “That was what she was about,” he says.
For decades, his grandfather Tony Murray hosted Saint-Tropez’s legendary “Gypsy Party,” a dinner for around 150 people that swelled past a thousand when doors opened to the whole village after midnight. Murray remembers watching it all come together as a kid. “Seeing my house light up a few days before with the speakers, the lights, the guest list, people running around, it was so entertaining,” he says. “I thought, ‘Wow, I love this.'”
That’s the instinct Isabelle was built on: a festival with the scale of a major international lineup but the manners of Saint-Tropez. “I wanted to create the boutique experience of a huge festival,” Murray explains. “A big lineup, a big production, but with the glamour and expectations of Saint-Tropez.”
Pulling that off is its own headache. “There’s no car that can go through the entrance,” Murray says. Everything—the sound system, the tables, the bar—gets moved into the Citadelle by crane. “They start to build out two hours on Monday and work around the clock until Friday.”
The programming reaches outside the Riviera on purpose, pulling from Ibiza, Miami, and Berlin, while staying rooted in something more local. Marco Carola carries particular weight on that list. He was Isabelle’s favorite DJ. Murray once brought her to one of his Ibiza residency sets as a Mother’s Day gift. They stayed until sunrise.
“I want people to leave saying, ‘Wow, what an experience,'” Murray says. “The music, the production, the sunset, the ocean, everything comes together.” Plenty of parties happen in Saint-Tropez every summer. Isabelle represents something different: a new kind of Riviera tradition, one built around memory, connection, and the belief that the most lasting experiences are the ones with a personal story behind them.
