THE York Late Music Festival is forging a partnership with Opera North for the first time in the centrepiece of the 2008 programme.

Through its Resonance Project, Opera North commissions new works that offer new ways to explore and discover opera. For next Saturday's event at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM), composer Mira Calix has worked in collaboration with the makers of Onibus, a documentary film by Augusto Contento that traces a public bus journey across Brazil.

Played by Calix and Opera North musicians, Calix's score for clarinet, marimba, cello and laptop weaves around the film of passengers talking, laughing and arguing their way through South America.

"Opera North is a big signing for us and it's a very important new partnership for the festival," says festival administrator Steve Crowther. "It's a piece with electronics and film, so it's not your standard Opera North fare."

The 2008 festival is billed as the "biggest and most diverse yet" by artistic director David Power. "Aside from the Opera North: Resonance event, the rest of the festival is divided into themed days, including days for jazz and world music and a day devoted to the music and influence of Japan on contemporary music," he says.

The festival runs from next Friday to June 15 and comprises 18 concerts of modern-day music at the NCEM, in St Margaret's Church, Walmgate. A day, June 14, will be devoted to celebrating the centenary of the birth of the deeply spiritual composer Olivier Messiaen, whose Quartet For The End Of Time will be played at 1pm by the Ossian Ensemble. Piano virtuoso and festival regular Ian Pace performs Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant Jesus in its entirety at 7.30pm. At 6.45pm, he talks about Messiaen in a pre-concert event.

The opening concert of New English and Australian Piano Music next Friday afternoon will be played by Australian pianist Zubin Kanga in his festival debut. His 1pm programme includes the world premiere of a new work by University of York music professor Nicola Lefanu, who will give a pre-concert talk at 12.15pm.

Further festival highlights include Noszferatu's subversive new music for ensemble and electronics next Friday at 7.30pm, incorporating new Irish works by Ed Bennett, Garrett Sholdice and Donnacha Dennehy and the theatrical mischief of German composer Michael Wolters.

Trio Atem perform works for flute voice and cello next Saturday at 1pm; Heather Bamforth and York-born Gavin Osborn present a York-orientated programme of improvised music mixed live from samples taken from local surroundings and diverse sound objects in Beacons Of Sound on Sunday, June 8, at 1pm; sound artist Jonty Harrison plays electronic music at 7.30pm that evening using Birmingham group B.E.A.S.T.'s "diffusion set-up".

Chimera's 1pm concert of Japanese music on June 9 includes the world premiere of festival assistant administrator Edward Caine's Madrigale and five new works by student composers. Five new Haiku settings by British composers will be in the Black Hair Ensemble's programme on June 9 at 7.30pm, while the University Of York Gamelan Orchestra performs new and traditional music on June 10 at 1pm.

Bireshwar Gautem integrates music and musicians into a theatre space in The Dying Song, an Indian theatre and music show about an androgynous thumri singer on June 10 at 7.30pm, while the contemporary jazz quintet Elastic Axis plays a new work by Alex Harker, a saxophonist trained by Gilad Atzmon.

Saxophonist Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble combine bebop with Middle Eastern influences in their selection of music from their new album, Refuge, on Thursday at 7.30pm.

The French Connection song recital by Mike Solomon Williams on June 13 at 1pm centres on the music of Poulenc, Debussy and Satie, plus a new work by David Power. Listen out too for the first performance of Songs For Don, Steve Crowther's settings of poetry by York writer Don Walls.

Another new Crowther piece has its premiere in the Fitzwilliam String Quartet's 7.30pm concert on June 13, sharing the spotlight with Vaughan Williams's String Quartet No 2.

  • The 2008 York Late Music Festival runs from June 6 to 15. For brochures and tickets, phone 01904 658338. For more details, visit the festival's new website: www.latemusicfestival.org.uk