And while they are busy in Wexford helping McLoughlin settle into his post, final details are being nudged into place for the second New Ross Piano Festival, which will take place next weekend. The summer may be well and truly over but for the escapists among us, this festival might be a welcome throwback to heady summer festival days.

The voluntary promoter group Music for New Ross undertook the venture last year for the first time, bringing Finghin Collins on board as artistic director and gathering together four other prominent Irish pianists and the Galway-based Con Tempo string quartet for what was, by all accounts, a hugely successful weekend of music-making.

Music for New Ross has judiciously retained Collins as the 2007 artistic director, and as a performer of note, but the perspective for this year's festival is tinged with a more distinctively international hue. Heading up that category are Swiss and British pianists Cedric Pescia and Freddy Kempf and the Berlinbased Ovid string trio, second prize-winners at last year's International Max Reger Chamber Music Competition.

To speak of competitions is to bring to mind the legendary success story of Freddy Kempf, who earned his greatest renown by NOT winning the top prize in the 1998 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. That he was awarded a consolatory third prize caused outrage among the audience and the Russian press, who heralded him as "the hero of the competition" and from whom he has since received rave reviews for various solo and concerto performances.

The attendance of John O'Conor at the festival casts a unique light on proceedings by way of the connection between him and two of his most distinguished students with whom he will share the stage at St Mary's Church, namely Finghin and Dearbhla Collins. The honour of opening the festival on Friday (8pm) falls to O'Conor, though audiences will, no doubt, be equally enamoured by the prospect of hearing him perform on four other occasions over the course of the weekend. Indeed, as the Collins would surely testify to, the master classes with O'Conor on Saturday afternoon (4.30pm) ought to be of as much interest to audiences as to the students with whom he will share his wisdom.

Due to an unfortunate cancellation by Ruth McGinley just a fortnight ago, Music for New Ross were lucky enough to secure the services of Maria McGarry as a replacement and, as another former student of O'Conor, a more appropriate outcome they could not have wished for. Soon to represent Ireland at the Biennale for Young Artists in Alexandria, Egypt, McGarry, is one of the few Irish musicians who can lay claim to a Julliard School qualification, an artist diploma in performance.

Having seen her perform in 2006 in Bantry, her lunchtime concert on 29 September comes highly recommended. Indeed, since McGarry has recently undertaken specialised study in the piano works of Messaien, her performance of his Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant Jesus is not to be missed at any cost.

Speaking of costs, at 80 for a weekend ticket, this is a bargain festival.