Natalie Clein

Accordionist Dermot Dunne shuttles artfully between the worlds of classical, jazz and South American folk music, and is always worth checking out whatever the genre. With Argentinean guitarist Ariel Hernandez, he is one of the founders of Lunfardia, an excellent quintent which specialises in the folk music of the guitarist's homeland, but Dunne has also performed jazz compositions by Ronan Guilfoyle and has adapted works from the classical piano repertoire for his accordion.

Next week, he will play a special one-off concert with British cellist Natalie Clein, who is in town for the Music in Great Irish Houses series, which runs from 7 to 13 June. Clein's official concert in the series, at Beaulieu House, Co Louth, is already sold out, but a meeting of Dunne and Clein has been scheduled for Thursday 11 June at the Freemasons Hall in Dublin's Molesworth Street. The repertoire will include works by Bach, Pablo Cassals, Fyfe Dangerfield of Guillemots, and tango master Astor Piazzola.

Lunfardia will be on the road themselves later in the summer, with performances slated for Airfield House, Dublin (25 July), and the Boyle Arts Festival (27 July). For more, go to www.lunfardia.com.

Fusion heavyweights Spectrum are one of those supergroups that convene only rarely, such are the challenges of co-ordinating the schedules of four very in-demand musicians. Tenor saxophonist Derek O'Connor is more usually found doubling on keyboards in the Tubridy Tonight house band, guitarist Jimmy Smyth is usually busy being nominated for Grammys, drummer Tom McDermott is busy doing session work and bassist Paul Moore is currently musical director of Van Morrison's band. So fans of the group will not need much encouragement to pack into JJ Smyths in Dublin this Wednesday night for one of the band's rare live appearances. But here it is anyway: if you like your fusion fast and furious, don't miss Spectrum.

OffBeat always likes to hear about musicians who defy all attempts to pigeonhole them, so the news that American cellist Liz Davis Maxfield is to become the first ever player of that instrument to be accepted onto the MA course in Irish Traditional Music Performance at University of Limerick is a welcome sign of openness and flexibility in two traditionally conservative genres.

Maxfield is typical of the modern generation of musicians, entirely unconcerned with the old divisions between classical, jazz, folk and pop: she grew up adapting Irish fiddle music for her cello, plays in a string quartet which fuses classical with American folk music into what they call 'chambergrass', and has just completed a degree at Berklee College of Music in Boston, the spiritual home of jazz education. She arrives in Ireland with a Fulbright scholarship in her back pocket and while she's here, she plans to write a book on adapting Irish fiddle and guitar styles to the cello. Find out more at www.lizdavismaxfield.com.