Thousands singing for their supper

Cork 2005: Putting on a good show is nothing new for the Cork International Choral Festival. For this year's event, running from Wednesday to Sunday, the booster of funds from Cork 2005 allows for additions, while the opening Te Deum by Berlioz flies the sponsorship flag of O'Callaghan Properties, one of Ireland's most prominent development companies.

This performance brings the welcome return of the Cologne Philharmonic Choir, which will join Cork's Fleischmann Choir, along with choirs of the Cork School of Music, its Symphony Orchestra, tenor Robert Craig, and organist Colin Nicholls, all under conductor Geoffrey Spratt.

Could that funding boost have been more generous? Probably, as the festival organisers received financial support for only two of the 10 programme proposals brought to Cork 2005. At the same time the search for sponsorship invited potential donors to take their pick, so this year the university-centred seminar on contemporary choral music has been omitted altogether.

This had offered modern composers an opportunity to produce performance material but, working to an annual budget of €220,000, and helped by grants from the Arts Council and city hall, the festival has managed to maintain a strong contemporary element.

Along with the requirement for competing choirs to include one modern item in their programme, the National Chamber Choir, conducted by Cologne-based Brazilian Celso Antunes, will highlight living composers in Contemporary Europe - A Choral Journey in Words and Music.

This is sponsored by Cork 2005 and by UCC, in a performance at St Fin Barre's at 7.30pm on Friday. And a new piece has been commissioned from Michael McGlynn for a recital by Anúna.

As founded by Aloys Fleischmann among others in 1954, the festival was always multi-faceted, with choristers from countries such as Ghana, the Philippines, Finland and Croatia plying their choral trade in banks, bars, hotels, libraries and shopping complexes.

Formal concerts at the city hall are balanced by such a diversity of recitals that the word "festival" contracts (or expands) to "festive" in the most generous sense, with 54 adult choirs taking part, 25 school choirs, 19 groups, more again singing at Sunday services in 16 churches, and a total of 4,500 participants at a time when the city is looking its prettiest.

The crowded programme includes Ethnic Voices, uniting such singers as Iarla Ó Lionaird and Cúil Aodha; White Raven of Switzerland; the Bulgarian Eva Quartet; the Sardinian male ensemble Tenores di Bitti, famous for their blend of medieval polyphony and traditions of north Africa; and, from the Republic of Tuva, the group Hun Huur Tu, whose throaty pastoral music evokes the landscape of Mongolia.

At the City Hall on Thursday at 8pm, this is also sponsored by Cork 2005 and by Indaver Ireland, while John Gibson's opera Judith and Holofernes at St Fin Barre's (5pm Saturday) is also supported by Cork 2005.

Anúna's Evocations will be the late-night event at the Cathedral of St Mary & St Anne on the north side, beginning at 10.30am on Friday.

Saturday morning sees the close of the Composers in the Classroom strand with resident composers John Spillane and Irene Buckley, while later that day 10 leading choirs from Europe compete for the Fleischmann Trophy at the City Hall. The trophy is presented at the closing gala concert on Sunday evening.