Altoist-rapper Soweto Kinch, a man on a creative high, topped this international jazz festival on merit last night. He and US trumpeter Abram Wilson shared the closing evening's bill with music from their imposing new Dune albums. Original suites with very different stories, both featured extended small-group improvisation and slick rapstyle narrative.

For some, rap represents 21st-century skiffle (or DIY for performers who can't play an instrument) but Soweto loves it. His suite, A Day in the LIfe of B19, is a reality rap-fest about a Birmingham tower block, with gritty jazz and grainy cameraphone videos on backprojection.

Between stunning alto-sax solos, he recites jazzy pen-portraits of residents (Adrian the divorced alcoholic, Marcus the money-mad wannabe rap-star) before duelling with male (MC Paradise) and female (Lyra Z) challengers who sauntered out of the audience. Thanks to his thespian pedigree (Soweto's mother is an actress, his father a writer-director) it was an impressive performance.

Wilson's parable, Rise, concerned a New Orleans runaway who joins a wicked band and can't get back home. Interpreted brilliantly by a larger group featuring drummer Rod Youngs, mouthorganist Errol Linton and saxmen Patrick Clahar and Denys Baptiste, it mixed blues with R'n'B and jazz both traditional and hypermodern.

The rap-quotient was not as high as Kinch's, yet this trend looks unstoppable. Not even Take Six, that peerless closeharmony gospel group from Alabama, could resist flirting with hip-hop and booming drum'n'bass at their Barbican show on Friday. Superb performances of I Got Life and Mary Don't You Weep recalled their Eighties peaks, but not before some older fans had fled in dismay.

They should have gone to Saturday's 60th-birthday concert by double-bass maestro Dave Holland. He joined venerable guitarist Jim Hall and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler at the Barbican, where pianist Jason Moran later deputised for ailing vibist Steve Nelson.

The Spitz, meanwhile, was rocking to the Blue Note groove of Killer Shrimp's tenorist Ed Jones and trumpeter Damon Brown. Their steaming drummer Shane Forbes stayed on stage with Andrew McCormack's piano trio. He, alongside Serious and BBC Radio 3 (broadcasting many festival highlights in coming days), were heroes of a gruelling week.