THE University of York’s Spring Festival of New Music next week will be a celebration of the diversity and vibrancy of contemporary music.

Ah, contemporary music. Did that term stop you in your tracks? “It’s a term daunting to most, being commonly misconceived as a highbrow, atonal, inaccessible form of music,” says Alice Ostapjuk, publicist for the festival’s run from May 8 to 12.

“The York Spring Festival of New Music, however, would like to highlight to you that the work of Katy Perry and Rihanna is in fact contemporary music. All music composed in the present day can be described as contemporary music, whether it be popular music, jazz, classical, electronic, installation, or musical theatre.

“And while Katy Perry or Rihanna, regrettably, won't be performing at the festival, we strive to present to you a diverse range of contemporary music, appealing to all.”

After running for more than two decades, the York Spring Festival became a student-run event in 2009. “The students being students, they decided they would change a few things,” says Alice. “In the process they completely revitalised the festival, creating opportunities for young composers, including a collaboration day and a platform to premiere new works, and presenting a wider variety of music to their audience.

“The students also created an education afternoon, welcoming students from schools to the university music department to take part in workshops and performances designed to emphasise the importance of the creativity and innovation necessary to modern-day music making.”

This year’s festival has the theme of Music, Technology and Imagination. “All the artists involved share a passion for originality and the use of cutting-edge technology to achieve artistic freedom and expression,” says festival director Alicia Oakes.

Meanwhile, the student committee has broadened the festival horizons once more by spreading out the events beyond the university campus concert halls to more relaxed settings and city-centre venues such as the National Centre for Early Music in Walmgate.

The festival will be launched next Wednesday by the University of York Chamber Orchestra, performing with The 24, pianist York alumnus Joseph Houston and viola player Victoria Bernath, at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert. The 7.30pm programme includes Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and the premiere of composer James Whittle and Victoria Bernath’s as-yet-unnamed music, theatre and movement collaboration: the first commission for the festival’s Terry Holmes Performer/Composer Award.

This new concerto on the theme of social, physical and psychological decay and regeneration has been inspired by Ted Hughes’s Yorkshire poetry.

At the Sitting Room Comedy night of musical comedy at Monkbar Hotel next Thursday at 7.30pm, University of York student Tom Taylor seeks to prove that music can be very funny with the aid of appearances by Boothby Graffoe, Helen Arney, Nick Doody and Kirsty Newton.

In Pierrot In The Moonlight, new ensemble Dark Inventions mark the 100th anniversary of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire by presenting it at the NCEM next Friday at 7.30pm in a relaxed cabaret setting in an English translation by Roger Marsh with new music by the project’s curators, Martin Scheuregger and Christopher Leedham.

The Jonathan Brigg Quintet, the “unpreditable” combo led by Brigg on piano, perform their new twist on contemporary jazz, same venue, same night, at 9.30pm.

Harpsichordist Jane Chapman explores performance and modern media, in the form of live video installation, in her May 11 recital at the university’s Rymer Auditorium at 7.30pm with Japanese video artist Yoshitaka Adachi alias VJ Gesuldoh.

The festival concludes on May 12 with a cross-university Collaboration Day for emerging composers to premiere their work at the Rymer Auditorium from 3pm and an electrifying after-party at Edge, Wentworth College, featuring DJ sets by Jez Wells and Jack Rutherford.

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