This year's RT�? Living Music festival, sponsored by IMRO, is an inspired attempt to break down some of these barriers, mixing what is called 'contemporary classical' with what is called 'jazz' in a way that will challenge those who think they only like music from one section of the shop.

Alongside an extensive programme featuring the music of American composer John Adams, Living Music will also present a roster of leading jazz musicians, chosen by the artistic director of this year's festival, composer and jazz musician Ronan Guilfoyle.

Several of Adams's works which will be performed in the festival, like '40% Swing' and 'Hail Bop', make explicit reference to jazz, and for Guilfoyle, there is no tension between the jazz and classical elements of the festival.

"Contemporary jazz and contemporary classical have been borrowing each other's clothes for the last 30 years. My focus was to get people from the jazz ghetto to listen to some music from the classical sphere, and vice versa."

So as well as works from Adams, Bartok and Ligeti, those of an open mind will get the opportunity to hear some of the jazz musicians whom Guilfoyle considers to be at the forefront of blurring these lines.

Saxophonist Tim Berne is one of the New York scene's most influential voices, leading a series of bands which have pushed back the boundaries of what 'jazz' can be. The visit of his Big Satan trio to Dublin in the late '90s was a defining moment for many of Ireland's younger jazz musicians, and it is this band, featuring guitarist Marc Ducret and drummer Tom Rainey, that Guilfoyle has included in his programme. "What I like about Big Satan is the way the compositions mutate into the improvisations and back into the compositions. It's so organic."

Pianist Jim McNeely, who performs in the festival with the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra is, says Guilfoyle, "the best living writer for large jazz ensemble. He marries the formal structural and harmonic language of classical music with the jazz idiom."

Moreover, McNeely's credentials as a player are impeccable, including stints with the Mel Lewis orchestra and the quartets of leading saxophonists Stan Getz and Phil Woods.

The John Field Room is the setting for perhaps the most challenging, not to say unmissable, event in this year's festival - a double bill of pianists, overtly mixing the composed with the improvised. Rolf Hinds and Simon Nabatov, two of the finest pianists in any genre according to Guilfoyle, will take turns in putting the NCH's Steinway through its paces, Hinds with Ligeti's groundbreaking Etudes and Nabatov with a wholly improvised set.

The festival runs from 16 to 18 February at various venues in Dublin, and also features crossover trombonist Ed Neumeister, the hottest group in Irish jazz, White Rocket, and a seminar in the Sugar Club, taking a quote from Adams as its starting point:

"whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy."

Meanwhile, the vernacular in its pure, unadulterated form may be inspected tomorrow night in JJ Smyths, when leading British saxophonist Don Weller joins pianist Phil Ware's trio at their weekly Summit meeting. Weller and Ware are the kind of musicians for whom the term 'hard swinging' was intended and those who think that there's too much of this 'serious art' nonsense around won't want to miss this one.