Soweto Kinch and Matthias Schriefl get the rocks rapping and singing at Südtirol Jazz Festival

There are few things more intimidating and more likely to make you consider your own minute mortality than staring at the face of 1,000-meter high mountain, with its gnarled limestone layers staring back at you with the blank-eyed weight of 65 million years of history. South Tyrol in northern Italy then made the perfect setting – or in this case the Dolomite mountains – to showcase the hugely engaging Südtirol Jazz Festival. Packing in some 90 gigs over 10 days against the jaw dropping beauty of a region, this year's festival drew inspiration from a plucky band of British 19th century rock climbers who formed the first ever rock-climbing club in 1857 as they set about exploring these imposing mountains. Honouring this Anglo-Italian connection also formed the basis of asking local lass done good in the form of London-based Ruth Goller, and her British partner Kit Downes, to programme a large chunk of the festival with fresh faced UK bands of varyingly vivid hues. However, the showstopper event was in fact the Singing Rocks concert, quite literally set on the slopes of an accommodating mountain.

Led by trumpeter and all round jazz joker Matthias Schriefl, his band Six Alps & Jazz, the local Brixen male voice choir (replete in lederhosen), plus Goller on bass and Soweto Kinch on sax and later rap, the sheer sight of a band set up to play was impressive on its own, let alone the fact they produced some intricate and engaging music too. With the musicians situated at the foot of a sheer 100-foot cliff face, it should have perhaps been no surprise that Schriefl's trumpet sounded out of sight, while clarinettist Florian Trübsbach wailed from the rock face dangling on a rope, Gregor Bürger’s sax sounding nearer the ground. As the three horns coalesced the players came into view as the rest of the band emerged from various nooks and crannies. The set itself was an intriguing blend of traditional folk songs from the choir, given an intricate jazz twist by the band, Peter Heidl’s tuba providing the link between oompah folk and the funky two feel of a New Orleans brass band – with solo sections turning distinctly bluesy.

With Kinch on hand and adding some spicy alto sax solos to the genre-splicing mix, the opportunity to explore some ‘alp-rap’ as well was too good to miss. So with Schriefl swapping trumpet for alphorn, Kinch set about laying down some beatboxed beats and some apposite rhyming couplets with the word ‘Dolomites’, getting the attendant 400 or so walking boot-clad listeners boogie-ing on down. If this stylistic mash up was pushing boundaries then the closing choir-band climax of Stevie Wonder's ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ was amplified further with some stunning synchronised abseiling with five climbers suspended 50 feet above, all joining hands and splitting away in a series of graceful moves – drawing whoops from many who, understandably, had never witnessed such a theatrical confluence of creativity in such a dramatic location before. Fittingly Six Alps and Jazz were then led in a Mardis Gras style march down the hill through the crowd – leaving everyone with a sense of being part of something joyfully off-piste, full of inventive humour and surprisingly subtle music.

If it was 32 degrees and sunny (yet fresh) at 2,000 feet above sea level then the weather in the centre of Bolzano the night before was trying its best to sabotage Soweto Kinch's quartet gig in the open air of the town's square. Barely had the band started when a drizzle turned into a fully-fledged downpour. A 20-minute time out seemed to recharge the four-piece – of trumpeter Jay Phelps, bassist Nick Jurd and hard swinging New York drummer Jason Brown – and refreshed by the rain Kinch unleashed a series of spiraling solos in a mesmerising dialogue with Brown. Dipping into some more hip hop, rap and sample fuelled territory with Jurd exemplary and inventive, and Phelps dishing out elegant lines full of poise, it was the sax and drums ricocheting ideas off one another that took this disrupted session to an altogether unexpected high.

With the cream of the current crop young British talent including Blue Eyed-Hawk, Troyka, Laura Jurd’s Human Spirit, Alice Zawadzki/Moss Freed duo, Chris Sharkey solo and with Shiver, Polar Bear, Brass Mask, Melt Yourself Down plus other Kit Downes collaborations such as Killing Popes and his Tricko duo with cellist Lucy Railton, alongside improv dons Mark Sanders and Paul Rogers, and a choice selection of local contemporary jazz crews all present across the week, Südtirol Jazz proved that the northern Italian hills are literally alive with the sound of music.

– Mike Flynn (report and photos)