Festival is back to the future; Music fans from across the globe will be converging on Huddersfield for the town's acclaimed Contemporary Music Festival. VAL JAVIN reports on what's in store for them.

Byline: VAL JAVIN

SPACE, science, research and technology. Big themes with a big influence on this year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

With the opening events on Friday there's a back to the future feel about the line-up for this year's edition of a festival now seen as a key player in the world of contemporary music.

Huddersfield in November is where eyes turn to from across the globe.

For when it comes to what's new, or to hearing and meeting the leading names in contemporary music, then this is where to be for 10 days from Friday.

The festival - now in its 31st year - has long been the hub of contemporary music not just for Huddersfield but for performers and supporters from around the world.

Dozens of musicians, composers, performers and artists will travel to the town to take part in 60 events at 16 venues.

In addition, some 50 international guests, including festival directors and producers from Europe, North America and the Far East, will be at the festival.

They have been invited either through HCMF's partnership with the British Council or to attend the Reseau Varese Symposium, being held in the UK for the first time.

The Symposium brings together 21 partners from 17 countries in a network which encourages European projects and the promotion of contemporary music.

These are the winter days when Huddersfield hums with sound, with voices and instruments being used to create all kinds of performances from concerts and talks to workshops and exhibitions.

Some of the events are in concert halls or the Lawrence Batley Theatre.

But many more are in less usual music venues; why not a picnic site, a library or an art gallery? All those and more will be used to bring sound and music to a wider audience.

In his programming for this year the festival's artistic director, Graham McKenzie, makes clear connections between technology's rapid and all-pervasive expansion in the 21st century and the equally fast and furious technological advances of the 1950s, many of which were either driven or embraced by the composers and creators now hailed as the founding fathers of contemporary music.

It is why key contemporary music innovators Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and the founding father of Dutch electronic music, Dick Raaijmakers, all feature prominently in this year's events.

John Cage will be revisited; Stockhausen revered; musique concrete, a form of electroacoustic music, revived; Dick Raaijmakers celebrated; Sun Ra, the controversial jazz giant, remembered.

But the festival is not just about revisiting iconic works from the world of contemporary music; it is very much about delivering new ideas.

And that's why the 2008 HCMF will present 28 world premieres and 64 UK premieres.

The festival opens on Friday with the launch of a documentary exhibition on composer, theatre maker and theorist Raaijmakers.

He was employed at the Philips Research Laboratory (Nat Lab) during the 1950s and his work spans performances, visual art and music theatre, alongside electronics and theoretical essays.

Listen to that talk at Huddersfield Art Gallery then head for Bates Mills on Queen Street South to see the UK premiere of one of Raaijmakers' most important music-theatre experiments, The Graphic Method: Bicycle which was inspired by the work of radical artists' movement Fluxus.

What you will see is a man on a bicycle pulled very slowly over 10 metres by a cable. His heartbeat, breathing and muscle contractions are amplified through sensors attached to his body.

Ten days later the festival will close by paying tribute to another giant of contemporary music, John Cage by re-creating a concert held 50 years ago in New York.

That original event, organised by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Emile de Antonia, spanned 25 years of Cage's compositions and was memorable, not just for what he had achieved but for the way in which the musicians deliberately wrecked the performance.

Fifty years on the musicians of Apartment House promise to perform with more dedication! John Cage: Concert Reclaimed at Huddersfield Town Hall will also include six new works from composers across the globe, all of whom have been invited to respond to Cage's work.

The focus turns to British music over the first weekend and includes world premieres of HCMF commissions by Christopher Fox, comme ses paroles, performed by Exaudi.

That weekend also features a portrait concert of composer Bryn Harrison and the Arditti Quartet returns for its thirteenth visit to the festival, performing an all-British programme of cutting edge contemporary music.

Hade Edge Band will be involved in a UK premiere at Bates Mill of a piece by Swedish-based Israeli composer Dror Feiler, whose work is seen as highly politicised and often controversial.

The band joins Austrian ensemble Klangforum Wien and a refuse lorry to perform the UK premieres of Basura and Mull. You join the band and the truck in the mill courtyard for Basura which then leads the audience to the main concert space for Mull.

And if you want to hear more of Dror Feiler why not join his Noise Orchestra for its world premiere of Music Is Castrated Noise.

Elsewhere, the festival's featured artists underline the diversity of what it has to offer. The Norwegian Wind Ensemble and Poing, arrive with a new work by Eivind Buene; Ascolta perform Frank Zappa from the late 60s to early 90s; Nouvel Ensemble Moderne from Montreal; Continuum from Toronto; Klangforum Wien; and the Scottish Flute Trio. And there's a focus on new music from Lithuania with three world premieres.

You can book online at www.hcmf.co.uk or phone the box office on 01484 430528.

Brochures are available from the HCMF office, call 01484 425082 or email [e-mail]

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'A man on a bicycle pulled very slowly over 10 metres by a cable.

His heartbeat, breathing and muscle contractions amplified'

CAPTION(S):

FESTIVAL HEADLINERS: Composer Christopher Fox, whose new work will be premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and (inset) composer Dror Feiler, whose piece Music Is Castrated Noise will also be premiered at the festival, which is seen as a key player in the contemporary music world. Dozens of musicians, composers, performers and artists will travel to the town