MAY is York Live music month, a celebration of 60 events at a dozen venues in the city.

Now in its fifth year, York Live Music Festival is an umbrella for concerts as diverse as jazz drummer Billy Cobham, pianist Jessica Williams and saxophonist Courtney Pine; Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell; folk rock luminary Richard Thompson; idiosyncratic American country singer Terry Allen; the Bollywood Brass Band, Europe's first Indian wedding brass band; and The Other Side Comedy Club's A Night Of Musical Comedians.

International musicians, local talent and schools all have their role to play in a festival that began in 2000, when the city took part in the BBC's Music Live festivities to mark the Millennium.

The following year, the BBC was so impressed by York's contributions to the Millennium event that Music Live was brought north for a triple-headed festival in York, Leeds and Bradford.

Ben Pugh, project manager for York Live, says: "From the success of that second year in particular, we gained momentum and since then the festival has grown and grown. We originally concentrated it around a weekend of events and while we still have concentrated weekends built around the two Bank Holidays in May, we have strongly built up the events in between."

City of York Council co-ordinates the festival, with Ben Pugh pulling the diverse strands together and organising the distribution of 20,000 free glossy festival brochures around the region.

"This brochure has a more general distribution than any individual music organisation. It goes into libraries, shops, bars, cafes, places that you might not normally expect to pick up a jazz leaflet, for example," says Ben.

The festival embraces many of the major players in York's musical cast list: York Theatre Royal, Grand Opera House, Barbican Centre, National Centre for Early Music, Black Swan Folk Club, City Screen, York, J-Night jazz, Fibbers and University of York. Cafs, bars and outdoor locations such as Parliament Street, St Sampson's Square and Rowntree Park play their community part too in the programme of jazz, folk, rock, blues, classical, digital and world music.

Many of the events were in place already, necessitating only a call from Ben for inclusion in the brochure. Yet with each passing year, he has noticed a growing awareness among music promoters in the city to mount events specifically for the festival.

"One of the things I would like to see flourish in future years is more involvement by local promoters, and that is already happening. Dan Atkinson, The Other Side Comedy Club promoter has programmed a night of musical comedians on May 23, featuring Mitch Benn from Radio 4's Crimes Against Music, because it is York Live month," says Ben. "Likewise we're encouraging regular music clubs to take a risk or experiment by putting on a more left-field act that may not appeal normally but would fit into a festival."

Pointing to further examples of promoters tailoring their programming to York Live, Ben continues: "Roland Walls at the Black Swan Folk Club is putting on The City of York Day of Folk on May 22 for the festival, and has planned it in conjunction with all the folk clubs in the city. The Black Swan is also putting on concerts at the National Centre for Early Music in addition to its own regular Thursday night slots.

"For the last few years too, David Porter has scheduled his J-Night jazz concerts to tie in with the festival, and this year we're marketing the concerts jointly. David has booked Billy Cobham, Courtney Pine and Jessica Williams; the city council has booked Dennis Rollins."

The council also has organised the York Mini Mela on Monday, May 3, when Parliament Street plays host to an Asian market of fabrics, food and fashion, and the Bollywood Brass Band performs Bollywood hits and bhangra tunes. "A dozen Asian market traders are taking part, and it's the first time we've tried anything like this in York, where there's a great tradition of markets and live music on the streets. We thought why not bring them together, and we hope that this can develop into something bigger for next year as part of the markets' calendar."

Updated: 16:34 Thursday, April 29, 2004