BEST IN SHOW

There's something for everyone in Kilkenny, says Peter Crawley

A camel, they say, is a horse that's been designed by committee. So when the artistic director of the Kilkenny Arts Festival resigned earlier this year and a panel of experts was briskly assembled to complete an unfinished programme, one could be forgiven for fearing something lumpy and misshapen.

In its sheer scale and diversity, however, this year's festival may reaffirm the credibility of collective judgement. There are no guiding themes nor a single vision behind the international and interdisciplinary festival as it enters its 32nd year, but that has yielded arresting contributions and intriguing diversions.

The strands of this year's festival reflect the personalities of each panelist, says general manager Sally Ebert. The strong early music focus of the classical programme mirrors that of Jeffrey Skidmore, artistic director of the Early Music Programme of the Birmingham Conservatoire. Finding room on the programme for his own choral group, Ex Cathedra, Skidmore himself conducts two contrasting concerts; a serene recital of Rachmaninov's Vespers, and the rumbustious Latin-American Vespers - Moon, Sun and All Things, both in the atmospheric surrounds of the medieval St Canice's Cathedral.

Improvised Music Company impresario Gerry Godley delivers an invigoratingly eclectic programme of jazz, world music and trad which takes in everything from Jaojoby's multicultural Madagascar groove to Altan to the Pakistani Qawwali group Rizwan-Muazzam. Meanwhile Hecho En Irlanda offers a festival within the festival, replete with Latin American dance classes, DJ sets and culinary delights.

Still, the dominance of this year's musical programme, not to mention a strong literary component which features Sebastian Barry and the IMPAC-nominated Canadian author Guy Vanderhaeghe, do point up the glaring omission of a single dance piece. Ebert does point out the dance elements of Performance Corporation's The Yokohama Delegation, the second co-production between the company and the festival in as many years, while theatre is rounded out by Garett Keogh's staged "radio drama" Dog Show (fresh from this year's Galway Arts Festival) and Trevor Knight's literary cabaret inspired by the short stories and poems of Dorothy Parker.

Visual arts offer a platform for local artists, together with exhibitions from a host of high flyers: Gerard Byrne's re-enactment of an interview with Jean-Paul Sartre at Desart House; Sean Lynch's polemical architectural project Fountain of the Ansbacher Bank; and Amanda Coogan's provocative, gun-toting performance of Aishling, 2005.

And as Kilkenny's medieval streets fill with the marauding grotesques of Australia's Snuff Puppets and Ireland's Buí Bolg, Ebert waits to see the town's reaction. "It's always interesting to see people's faces as they come across them," she enthuses. Maybe lumpy and misshapen figures aren't so worrying after all.

This year's Kilkenny Arts Festival runs from August 12th-21th. www.kilkennyarts.ie, 056-7752175