Place fit for a jazzy B.B. King

Sometimes it's hard to escape the Montreux blues. There's the vast, cerulean expanse of Lake Geneva stretching out from the shoreline - Western Europe's biggest expanse of fresh water, a vast puddle of the Rhone on its way to the Mediterranean 250 miles south near Marseilles.

On a fine summer day, there is that azure sky, too, a perfect, clear high ceiling stretching in every direction, up into the snow-capped mountains to the east, west towards the flatter lands of Geneva.

And, this being July, you have to add one more shade of blue to the equation. As we sat on the waterfront watching a couple of eagles soar leisurely over a departing paddle-steamer, we could hear sounds you would never expect of a small Swiss holiday town much like Broadstairs set next to the Alps: some of the hottest jazz, soul, gospel and rock you are ever going to hear in one place at one time.

This is the Montreux Jazz Festival, one of the more curious musical happenings on the planet.

Had you happened through this normally sleepy spot last year, as I did, you could have listened to rock giants like Bob Dylan, Beck, Sting, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the blues god B.B. King, and jazz legends such as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Manhattan Transfer.

And all performing on one of two modest, intimate stages, the Stravinsky Auditorium and the Miles Davis Hall, both named after two very different musicians with strong links to the town.

We found our way to Montreux out of necessity. Son Tom, a keen jazz fan and musician himself, was about to turn 16 and deserved a live gig fix after tackling his GCSEs.

A quick perusal of the American and European jazz scenes soon revealed the obvious: if we wanted to fit in as many big names as possible into the four days open to us there really was nowhere else to be.

Some 220,000 people pack into this laid-back, lakeside location for those two weeks and music follows them every step of the way. Fringe bands from around the world play for free in the well-manicured parks. Hopeful amateurs pop up everywhere from local cafes to the prestigious, and rather snooty, solo piano competition that takes place in the refined surroundings of the lavish Montreux Palace Hotel. You can hear American high school choirs murdering jazz standards and grizzled three-piece amateurs thrashing through old Hendrix.

For the active musician there are other delights, too, master classes and workshops, many of them free, in which you can listen to the likes of B.B. King talking about the music they love. It was at one of these that Tom had his first Montreux moment.

The night before we had watched, stunned, as the American jazz bassist Marcus Miller and his band played a set of astonishing power and virtuosity in the Stravinsky auditorium.

The following day Tom sat in awe with a handful of fellow musicians listening to the artist spend a day talking about his technique and his musical philosophy.

The venue was uniquely Montreuxtoo: the town performance school's home, a classic Swiss mansion in the old town which was the birthplace of the poet Rambert.

To top it all, the afternoon closed with everyone in the room taking their turn to play with Marcus in a series of improvised jam sessions.

Tom walked out of the place feeling 10ft tall: we'd been in Montreux less than 24 hours, taken in three big name concerts and he had an autographed Miller CD and a jam session with Miles Davis's former bassist up his sleeve.

We divided our brief time between maximum exposure to music and some much-needed quiet relief in the astonishing scenery around Montreux. Each evening you have a choice of two concerts - one rock, one loosely classified as jazz - and an array of free events running throughout the town and into neighbouring Vevey.

We soon learnt to conserve our energy.

In the Stravinsky, the larger of the two venues, the main act rarely comes on before midnight. When old jazz names get together to jam a little on stage - which happens very easily in Montreux - you could find yourself hanging around until well after 3am before the players on the stage succumb to the exhaustion the audience is already feeling.

Free buses run throughout the neighbourhood until four in the morning and you can buy something to eat in Harry's Bar, in the Montreux Palace, as late as 4.30. No wonder our genial hosts at the Hotel Masson, a historic giant chalet on the hillside out of town, gave us a key to the place and said to let ourselves in at any time of the night we fancied. And they say the Swiss are square.

There are, happily, plenty of ways to relax, too. We wandered around the old town and enjoyed a classic raclette - a fancy kind of Swiss cheese on toast - in a friendly local inn.

One free morning we took off on a deserted walk by the lake, through vineyards that roll up the hill in terracesoverlooked by fine old stately mansions.

The paddle-steamer east, to the classic chateau of Chillon, standing by the shore like something out of a fairytale, is a must. If you have time, these steamers make excellent floating restaurants too - a three-course meal on the lake is, at around £10 a head without drinks, a rare local bargain in an area of relatively high prices.

And on the last day we simply could not resist the mountains. A short funicular took us to the little mountain train line which, in the space of an hour, rattled up a steep hillside. The beaming driver, dressed in pyjama uniform with a red hat, waved at people working their gardens in the remote chalets set against the hillside. We rattled by tiny huts that passed as stations, a few with minute fondue restaurants by the side.

Finally, we pulled in close to the summit of the ski resort, Rochers-de-Naye, more than 6,500ft above sea level. The weather had closed in. The famous botanical garden was being drowned in sleet. We staggered through a tunnel drilled through the mountain and found ourselves a table for lunch, sitting down to a lovely beef fondue by the panoramic window. In a few minutes the sky cleared.

The view left both of us speechless: the lake stretched on beyond Lausanne, towards Geneva, while the French Alps stood opposite us in a stately row, crowned with white. And somewhere down there, we knew, there was music. In our heads we could hear it still.

The following morning found us at Montreux station at 6.30, waiting for the direct train back to Geneva airport and, a mere 70 minutes later, a rainy Gatwick.

Tom couldn't stop wondering what Isaac Hayes would sound like on the Stravinsky stage that evening. I found myself wanting to catch one more train, the Golden Pass Line, that runs straight into the high mountains, through Gstaad and Interlaken, then on to Lucerne and Zurich. But we would have been happy with either.

Between the music and the mountains, a generation scarcely mattered, which was, perhaps, Montreux's greatest magic trick of all.

? The Montreux Jazz Festival takes place from July 5 to 20 and tickets go on sale from April 25. Look at the website www.montreuxjazz.com for details - and to hear some of the music from the 2001 festival.

Getting there

Seven nights' half-board in the Hotel Masson, including return flights from Heathrow, return rail travel from Geneva to Montreux and a half-price Swiss rail pass, costs £515 per person during July from the Swiss Travel Service on 0870 191 7280. The Switzerland Travel Centre (0207 292 1550) has passes that let you travel the length of the country by bus, train and boat. Prices start at £101 for four days. Buy a family card and children under 16 travel free.

City guide: Montreux
Destination guide: Switzerland
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