YORK Spring Festival's annual celebration of new music runs from tomorrow until Sunday at venues around the University of York and York city centre.

The festival comprises concerts, installations, a workshop and a musical and literary walk-through in a showcase for student performers and composers, as well as international contemporary performers.

The festival's main theme involves collaborations in a variety of art forms. Tomorrow's 7.30pm opening concert presents University Chamber Ensemble in tandem with Patrick John Jones and Jin Hyung Lim, winners of the 2015 Terry Holmes Composer & Performer Award, and James Whittle, winner of the 2015 Lyons Celebration Award. Jones's Cast (After Moholy-Nagy) and Whittle's Brethren will be performed in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall.

Thursday's 7pm concert in the Department of Theatre Film and Television presents Piano Player, a collaboration between pianist Catherine Laws, theatre maker Teresa Brayshaw, film maker Wendy Kirkup and composers Edward Jessen, Annea Lockwood, Roger Marsh and Paul Whitty.

A second collaboration, an exploration of sound and performance art with laptop improviser and live coder Federico Reuben, takes place immediately afterwards. Two figures from the British free jazz and improvised music scenes, saxophonist Rachel Musson and drummer Mark Sanders, will be joining Reuben for an 8.45pm programme of powerful, imaginative and thought-provoking improvisations.

On Friday, in the Department of Music's Rymer Auditorium, The Chimera Ensemble premiere a Spring Festival commission by Finnish composer Perttu Haapanen in a 7.30pm concert that blends electronic and acoustic instruments. New works by students will be showcased too.

Michael Finnissy’s 70th birthday will be celebrated on Saturday in a 7.30pm concert by pianist Ian Pace in the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, presented in association with the York Late Music series.

At 6.45pm, Finnissy will give a pre-concert talk about his new Spring Festival commission, Beethoven’s Robin Adair, before its premiere alongside new works by Andrew Toovey and Luke Stoneham and further pieces by Percy Grainger, Steve Crowther, Beethoven and Lawrence Crane.

Sunday presents the Festival Promenade, a 1.30pm walk-through of spoken word, movement and musical performances in the gardens beside the New School House Gallery, in Peasholme Green, where the present New Curators exhibition can be viewed too. If wet, the performance will take place in the gallery. Admission is free.

The festival concludes with international contemporary flautist Carla Rees performing "a conversation between flutes and narrator", featuring works by Marc Yeats, Tristan Murail, Sungji Hong, Elliott Carter and Dominic Sewell, at the Stained Glass Centre, St Michael-cum Gregory Church, Micklegate, at 5pm.

For more information and tickets, visit yorkspringfestival.co.uk/2016/