Music Preview: Sound in every way

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

Various Venues, today to 30 Nov

A wind instrument spectacular, including 700 performers, will offer a rare sight during half-time at the McAlpine Stadium and the Huddersfield Town vs Reading game. It can ensure mass applause for a festival whose hopes are to bring new meaning to contemporary music and to make some pop out of classical.

The events planned for the festival's 20th anniversary will focus on performance theatre and music, with a strong Scandinavian and German flavour. With 66 premieres in two weeks, it also covers everything from librettos to the only playable carnyx in existence: an ancient Celtic war trumpet whose bronze, wild boar's head and baying noise struck fear into Roman invaders.

Many of the performances will use the latest sound technology and its inspired off-shoots, blending music, performance and art, as seen in the theatrical Vienna Art Orchestra, or a concert of computer-generated tape compositions and live processing such as York University's unique 3-D ambisonic sound projection with computer animation.

"Beyond The Blue Horizon", with the Trestle Theatre Company, uses masks and puppets with a life-size camel, a windswept sand storm, a flying man, a fully functional sea and a 10-piece orchestra.

At various venues in Huddersfield. Tickets: 01484 430528. Information: 01484 472103.