Collaboration feeding on cross-fertilisation

Collaboration across art forms is a central theme of this year's Éigse Carlow festival programme.

Traditional music past and present will be on offer when Altan join forces with Carlow Young Artists Choir at the Cathedral of the Assumption (Friday 13th, 8pm), while what may well be the music of Ireland's future is showcased by the instrumental octet Yurodny (The Music Factory, Wednesday 11th, 9 pm).

This ensemble of young European musicians based in Ireland promises to venture the road less travelled, exploring a variety of musical styles from Jewish klezmer through Balkan rhythms, all the way to Turkey and the Arab tradition.

The highest standard of Irish traditional style will be on the menu when sean-nós maestro Iarla O Lionaird and fiddle virtuoso Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh are joined by guitarist Leo Abrahams and keyboard wizard Graham Henderson at St Mary's Church in Castle Street (Thursday 12th, 8pm).

The Carlow Young Artists Choir will be busy throughout the festival with their touring dramatisation of Nick Page's The Nursery Rhyme Cantata - a quasi-serious piece for chorus and piano. Performances will take place in Bagenalstown, Tullow, Hacketstown and Carlow, and audience participation is not only allowed, but actively encouraged.

A whole new take on one of our favourite cultural activities - shopping - will be offered by Wired Aerial Theatre from the UK in a new site-specific work for Carlow Shopping Centre. Shopped (Sunday 15th, 2pm and 5pm) will combine dance theatre, gymnastics, bungee skills and storytelling. Andy Field's one-man show The Last Walk of Carlow Man (Thursday 12th to Saturday 14th, 8pm), meanwhile, is a journey into Carlow's past.

The eponymous male is 5,555 years old, and has dragged himself from his boggy tomb to take one last walk through the streets to celebrate his birthday. Audiences are invited to don a pair of headphones and a party hat and tag along as Carlow's oldest citizen wanders through five millennia of half-remembered history.

Éigse's visual arts programme has always been one of the festival's greatest strengths, and this year's programme, from visiting curator Rob Lowe, ranges from the Chinese artist Hock Aun Teh's large-scale abstract expressionist paintings - being shown in Ireland for the first time - to Singing the Real, an exhibition of contemporary

Irish art from the RHA Gallagher Gallery, featuring the work of 10 artists including Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross and Grace Weir.

Meanwhile, book fans will want to check out readings by Tess Gallagher (Cobden Hall, St Patrick's College, Tuesday 10th, 8.30pm) and Colm Toibin (Cobden Hall, Thursday 12th, 8.30pm); and last but not least, a full programme of children's events will include a timely staging of Jean Giono's environmental cult classic The Man Who Planted Trees by Puppet State Theatre (Townhall Theatre, Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th, 3pm) while comedians David O'Doherty and Maeve Higgins have a children's show, I Can't Sleep (Townhall Theatre, Wednesday 11th, 11am and 1pm).

Éigse Carlow runs from June 7 to 15. For full details see www.eigsecarlow.ie, or tel: 059-9140491.