The music at Luminox was only a taste of Oxford Contemporary Music's season, writes PAUL MEDLEY

The spring season of Oxford Contemporary Music's began at the remarkable Luminox events but, according to director Jo Ross, the best is yet to come. There will be a UK première plus two events which illustrate OCM policy of encouraging new work.

In a co-operative effort with Turner Sims Concert Hall in Southampton and South Hill Park in Bracknell, OCM set up a commission competition.

From the many submissions the one chosen is a fascinating collaboration between the internationally known Tunisian singer and oud player, Dhafer Youssef, and the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis, which specialises in polyphonics based on Gregorian chant and contemporary Estonian works, with composer Helena Tulve working on the arrangements.

Youssef, who recently made an album with Scandinavian jazz musicians, has his roots in the Sufi music of Islam and a voice of extraordinary emotional clarity. Fittingly, this concert will be in the Sheldonian Theatre.

The second commission, in this case in collaboration with the Oxford Playhouse and Dorchester Abbey and entitled Thin Air, is a sound installation by composer Helen Ottaway and sound designer Alastair Goolden.

Having already set up similar events in two cathedrals, these two artists will create a soundscape designed for the interior of the 12th-century Dorchester Abbey.

It will include pre-recorded music, voice and sounds from the abbey itself and is set up so the visitor activates the soundscape by moving around the space. The event will be free for a week and include a candlelit evening.

During the same week, the abbey will be the venue for a concert featuring the Magyar violinist Felix Lajko, who will be performing in duo with the exuberant Romanian violinist Alexander Balanescu.

Lejko can command an audience of thousands in his native country while Balanescu is already well-known in Britain for both his own classical quartet and his work in other cross-over groups. This should be an evening that defies musical stereotype in this remarkably evocative setting.

The première is a collaboration with the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building and will held at the venue.

Lighting Up brings together the work of photographer Jurgen Shadeberg, who documented life in South Africa among the indigenous tribes and under apartheid as projected images, the Pretorian quartet, Heavy Spirits, who began by playing in the townships, and the French group Le Workshop de Lyon, who, as part of the art collective ARFI, have a history of working with visual media and using music that echoes the sounds and rhythms of South Africa.

Lighting Up is described as "an encounter between jazz and photography, shadow and light". The remarkable photographic archive should be a moving backdrop to jazz that moves into free improvisation. Also in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building there is another collaboration between the percussive skills of Joby Burgess, last seen here as part of Three Strange Angels, the Elysian Quartet, who often take their music out of the concert hall and into clubs, alongside visuals by Kathy Hinde and electronic sound by Matthew Fairclough.

The evening is a multi-media homage to Kraftwerk but the programme also contains work by Prokofiev and Steve Reich and other modern composers. As always there is a concert in the Zodiac in Cowley Road aimed at the younger audience. A Hawk and a Hacksaw - Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost - are a duo from New Mexico familiar to those interested in New Folk.

They will be joined by the Hun Hangár Ensemble for an evening of reworkings of traditional Hungarian and Balkan folk songs alongside material from AHAAH's own back catalogue.

Besides these main events, there are more late afternoon performances in the coffee bar in Modern Art Oxford, including some more cutting-edge work from Parkinson Sanders and Daniel Weaver.

A new concept this season is a set of events in the new Jam Factory café and gallery in Park End Street. Called Slounge, this is a mix of visual art with music and poetry and includes work by MA students in Oxford Brookes University.

This sounds like a welcome addition in a more informal setting that also uses a very small portion of the many talents in Oxford.

For more information on the OCM season look at their website ocmevents.org