THIS year, Leominster Festival is designed to appeal to a wider audience than ever before. Classical music, jazz, soul, blues, choral, guitar, percussion and swing are all represented, as well as Japanese drumming and a return of the ever popular Reduced Shakespeare Company with 'The Millennium Musical'.

The festival opens with Lemster's Millennium of Musicke which is part of the BBC Music Live Day and ends with the annual concert by the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra. In between a wide variety of musical events are presented, together with the Ann Rutherford Art Exhibition, a beer festival, a Youth Festival of the Arts, a talk by author Nick Crane and a performance by Mugenkyo, Europe's first and only professional Taiko drum group.

The festival also features farce and fanfaranade with Cocteau and Feydeau, John Suchet's illustrated lecture on Beethoven - The Last Master and a Herefordshire Local History Day.

Booklets with the Leominster Festival 2000 programme are available from any library, tourist information centre and a number of other places, and the box office opens on Monday, May 8 at Capriole Music, Buttercross Arcade, Leominster, telephone 01568 613477. Advance bookings may be made by telephoning 01568 612874.