Audiences always want musicians to play the same old music. So the Masters of Tradition Festival decided to break the mould, writes Siobhán Long.

So much of what we see and hear these days is bound up in the clang and din of the everyday that subtlety and finesse can get lost. Traditional music has had a long association with clamour and racket, having earned more than a share of its stripes in the bustle of the pub and the mêlée of the fleadh ceoil. And still some musicians have chosen to turn their amps way down, or even off, happy in the knowledge that there are listeners willing to strain to hear what lurks beneath the surface. The second Masters of Tradition Festival, at Bantry House in Co Cork, adds more support to what could be called the musical version of the slow-food movement.

Ruud Kuper, general manager of West Cork Music, which organises the festival, is well versed in the art of the possible, helmsman of an organisation that cut its creative teeth in 1995 with the first West Cork Chamber Music Festival. Inveigling the magnificent east Clare fiddler Martin Hayes to help with the first Masters of Tradition Festival, last year, Kuper is one of that increasingly successful breed of arts administrators who refuse to get bogged down in dour classification arguments, opting instead to create the kind of environment where differing musical styles can coalesce as organically as possible.

"I met Martin a few years ago at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, where he played a late-night concert," says Kuper. "As we got to know each other better we began to talk about doing something special in Bantry House, where the music talks, and only the music is important.

"Martin came up with the idea of having intimate sessions for the masters, where they can feel at home, do whatever they want, without any commercial pressure or pressure from fans to play what they always play."

Coupling the intimacy of the session with the concert stage, the festival is first and foremost for musicians, free of the fetters that can come with commercial sponsorship. One of the festival's attendant aims is to create a network of like-minded musicians, who might be able to support one another in ways that promoters and managers never can.

Having learned his music from his father and a host of other superb east Clare musicians, Hayes knows a thing or two about the value of silence and the need for musicians to bask in the pleasures of repertoires of their own choosing. "I always like to hear individual musicians or very small ensembles," he says mildly. "I love being in a situation where you can hear a player doing their own thing, because we have lots of opportunities to hear bands playing, wherever we go. Last year, to be able to spend a night listening to Liam O'Flynn doing his own thing was fantastic. And this year we'll have the same chance to hear Steve Cooney and Tony MacMahon and Frank Harte do just that."

Hayes has been a wholehearted subscriber to the less-is-more school of music both on record and in his live performances. "Very few record companies would be willing to throw their weight behind a solo fiddle recording in comparison to a full band," he says, "but I don't necessarily think that you're getting more from listening to six or seven players than you get from one.

"Not every musician is happy playing alone, but by inviting musicians to play in Bantry we're already saying: 'We love what you do and that's that - you have nothing to prove.' For example, Altan are a great band, but it'll be great to hear Mairéad and Dermot [Ní Mhaonaigh and Byrne] doing their own thing too.

"I remember Tommy Potts coming to play a concert in our kitchen when I was a child, and we would sit there and listen. That quiet, intimate experience of music is the real core, and yet that way of listening to Irish music has received the least attention and isn't often experienced these days."

Nor is it so much the length of the bill that matters as the quality of the musicians who are participating. "We don't have a huge roster for the festival, but we give ample time to what we consider to be a select group of musicians. The festival can't accommodate huge numbers in audience terms, either, but West Cork Music has already built up a reputation among chamber-music fans, and many of those people aren't necessarily just interested in chamber music. This is a chance to open up the audience to alternative sounds."

The festival's heady setting last year raised the ire of some traditional-music stalwarts, who had difficulty reconciling the music with its post-ascendancy location. "There's no attempt to bridge any historical gaps here by bringing the music of the peasantry into the big house," says Hayes, unapologetically. "It really had more to do with the fact that we saw chamber music working so well in that space without any amplification, and it's a lovely place to hear music.

"For me, we should be able to look back objectively at our history and not get so emotionally wrapped up in it. There's a certain irony in it, no doubt, but I wouldn't pay any more attention to it than that. I think music should enter into those situations and out of those situations without the slightest concern as to whether it belongs or not. If it's of a certain quality, it does. It's the same argument as asking if there's such a thing as high art and low art. I don't subscribe to that way of thinking at all."

Christy Moore, one of the festival's guest musicians, welcomes the opportunity for unplugged intimacy."There's an awful lot more music being listened to intensely now than there was 30 or 40 years ago," he says. "People are now prepared to be satisfied by the music, without the other extracurricular activities going on simultaneously. When I think of what we had to contend with years ago with Planxty, with bars going on, it's wonderful now. People come in on time, and they're raring to go, raring to listen. That's not the way it always was."

Moore's experience of traditional music has changed for the better too. "When I first started listening to traditional music, 40 years ago, the only opportunity for me to hear it was in the corner of a bar, and order was neither asked for nor expected. But I went to Bantry last year and I heard Martin Hayes perform and I heard Liam O'Flynn, playing whatever they wanted, with no distraction, and it was fantastic."

That kind of freedom is what has lured Moore to the stage of Bantry House himself this year. "I'm going to go wherever the music goes," he says, "whereas everything else that I do, I work at it, I shape it, and it's an entirely different thing. I'm really going to Bantry to be in the company of people whom I love to hear. I'm delighted to be given the opportunity to sing a song with them. That's what it's about really. Nothing more or nothing less."

The Masters of Tradition Festival is at Bantry House, Co Cork, from Wednesday until Sunday. Call 027-52788 or visit www.westcorkmusic.ie