A TYPEWRITER and an aluminium harp will be among "all sorts of interesting oddities" and unusual instruments in Joby Burgess's Pioneers Of Percussion, Monday morning's coffee concert for Ryedale Festival at the Galtres Centre, Easingwold.

Burgess's 11am performance will bring together ground-breaking solo works from innovative 20th and 21st century composers, such as Toru Takemitsu's Seasons, an exploration of our changing ecology through a delicate metallic landscape that features the aluminium harp, the pure-toned instrument created for the 1927 film Chicago, whose resonating metal rods are famously difficult to play.

A new work by Montreal "musical scientist" Nicole Lizée, The Filthy Fifteen, is inspired by the glitches of outmoded and well-worn technology, including a typewriter, while young Dublin composer Linda Buckley's new commission, Ekstasis, is full of melody and Iannis Xenakis's Psappha explodes with muscular and abrasive rhythms taken from ancient Greek texts.

"It's really important to have a rapport and a relationship with the composer of a new work, largely because you're going to be spending time with them, with all the aspects that go with that, such as the first performance and then after that," says Joby. "For example, Nicole [Lizée] was introduced to me in Vienna two years ago and we then collaborated together in Montreal."

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a percussionist is that "you don't just play one instrument, but hundreds". "So you have a very specific skill set," says Joby. "I have a vast collection of instruments that I've built up over 15 years, as well as working with people who create new instruments, and part of the creative process for me is seeking out composers that I can work in this way, utilising these instruments."

Sometimes a composer will present Joby with a batch of ideas he or she wants to explore. "Nicole wanted to write about the 'Filthy Fifteen' uprising against the rock'n'roll industry, and in her piece she wanted to represent what she called 'The Censorship Kit', with the percussive sounds of a typewriter, torn paper and books that open up to be played like a clapper," he says.

For those unfamiliar with "The Filthy Fifteen", they were 15 songs deemed unsuitable, on the grounds of being too explicit, by an American committee that called itself the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985. Among the songs were Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop and Motley Crue’s B***ard; among the committee’s founders was Al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore; and this was the committee responsible for enforcing Parental Advisory stickers on audio recordings, a "flashing light" policy that remains in place.

Lizée's piece gives Burgess the chance to express himself as much physically as musically, as does Toru Takemitsu's Seasons. "There's a real choreography and dance-like nature to the performances I give," he says. "In Takemitsu's work, I'm surrounded by this giant metallic sheet that I 'play' with a SuperBall. Notionally it's a toy, a largish ball that should bounce as high as you drop it, but it makes a wonderful bass-drum sound on contact with the metal sheet, so you get all that 'subsonic experience' from a ball you can just buy from a toy shop!"

Joby began as a rock'n'roll and jazz drummer but has since diversified into more avant-garde music, with his ever-expanding assortment of percussive instruments. "It's really important to have a really good home life, so I keep my collection away from the home, beyond the garage, beyond the pine tree," he says. ""But luckily the house I grew up in when I first played drums was two 17th century cottages put together and I had a room at one end!"

Joby Burgess, Pioneers Of Percussion, Ryedale Festival, Galtres Centre, Easingwold, July 25m, 11am. Box office: 01751 475777 or at ryedalefestival.com