"IN my first year, my aim has been to create a programme of concerts, performed by great artists, which celebrate, stimulate and illuminate, offering audiences a diverse and richly satisfying diet of music, new and old, familiar and unfamiliar," says Martyn Brabbins, brand new director of the Cheltenham Music Festival which runs from July 1-17.

The main theme is Russia and there are concerts of music by great names like Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Prokoviev and Mussorgsky as well as a full-scale (free) Tchaikovsky-athon for all the family.

New music includes work by Karlheinz Stockhausen and cutting edge concerts by established musicians, the Festival Players, and the Academy Players, a parallel group of music students.

Resident artists, the Florestan Trio, perform the piano trios of Beethoven and great names like Kiri Te Kanawa, Alfred Brendel, Felicity Lott and Imogen Cooper need no introduction.

There is a series of staged events such as Stravinsky's epic, The Soldier's Tale, I Fagiolini with the astonishing Full Monteverdi and a new musical version of Aristophanes The Birds.

The mighty Huddersfield Choral Society in a candlelit performance in Tewkesbury Abbey and the Tenebrae choir and Endymion ensemble in the St John Passion in Gloucester Cathedral are events not to be missed.

All this, plus a comprehensive education and outreach programme and lots of family events.

For more information visit www.cheltenhamfestivals.co.uk or call 01242 237377