Comparing musical notes at Boxwood

The hills - and the lakes, streams and other parts of the local geography - will be alive with the sound of flutes and fiddles over the next week.

The annual Boxwood festival, which this year forms part of the Rotorua Festival of Arts programme, sees participants from around the world coming together to compare musical notes, give concerts and share their wealth of expertise with younger musicians.

The completely non-competitive event will include daily classes and workshops for flute, whistle, recorder and fiddle players of all levels at the Springcreek Homestead at Lake Tarawera. The Boxwood festival starts with a free concert at The Orchard on the shores of Lake Tarawera. Featuring performances by Scottish fiddle great Alasdair Fraser and flute phenomenon Chris Norman, audience members are invited to bring blankets, cushions and their own picnic dinner to the concert, which begins at 7.30pm. "These guys are all big international names," organiser Mark Dannenbring said. "Alasdair is Scotland's finest fiddle player and Rachel [Brown] is one of the top all-round flute players in the world. "I would say hands down that these will easily be the best musicians performing in the entire Rotorua Festival of Arts."

Other events open to the public include a "Ceili Dance" at St John's Church on Sunday night and a finale concert at the Rotorua Convention Centre featuring guest harpsichordist Douglas Mews.

Entry to the Ceili Concert is by gold coin donation while the finale concert costs $20 for adults and $15 for children and senior citizens.