The enigmatic Nitin Sawhney comes to the Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures this weekend to create - and then perform - a new work that will profit from a multitude of musical experiences. But, he tells Jim Carroll, there is no room for egotism - even his own

It may have been a bad idea to ask Nitin Sawhney what he's up to at the moment. As he rattles off a list that includes embarking on a worldwide DJing tour, writing a new play for the English National Theatre, recording a new album to follow last year's Human, finishing off a couple of film scores and preparing for performances with the British Symphonia, you hope someone will remind him about his Irish engagements later this month.

Sawhney will be artist-in-residence at the Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures. Over the weekend, he will work with a clatter of Irish musicians to deconstruct and rebuild the title track to his excellent 2001 album, Prophesy. Sawhney will not meet the musicians with their fiddles, bodhráns, uileann pipes, flutes, whistles and samba drums (plus a couple of singers and a gospel choir) until he walks into the room on Saturday morning. After workshops, some of which will be open to the public, Sawhney and his new-found band will then perform the track live at a free outdoor concert on Sunday afternoon.

It will not be Sawhney's first time to conduct such an impromptu band and he talks eagerly about comparable past experiences in Manchester and Australia. "In Manchester, I worked with a lot of local musicians from different disciplines, many of whom had not been on stage before, and we had 72 hours to turn around the music for an hour-long concert," he remembers. "The musicians were very nervous at the start, but they performed and they got a standing ovation at the end of it."

For him, workshops like Dún Laoghaire are about "creating a powerful statement on what can be achieved when people of different disciplines and cultures collaborate together. The whole idea is to bring people together who may not normally encounter each other and to get them to work together."

Each session begins, he says, with an ego-check. "I make sure people can suspend their egos and start listening to each other and have respect for each other. Once I've created that atmosphere, it's about establishing a theme or an idea that everyone feels connected to, so that they have something in common they can express. It's not about isolated individuals expressing themselves without regard to anybody else; it's everybody working together and using their skills to produce a performance."

Ego-checking also applies to Sawhney the conductor. "I make albums, I write music, I work with bands, I do all these different things and sometimes, I want to dictate what goes on. Instead, I have to find out what the others want to say and what they have to offer and to try to bring that out. I find that aspect very, very rewarding. Sometimes you can get caught up in the world of commercial artists so it's brilliant to do something where expression and creativity are what matter.

"I'm not looking for genius technicians, I'm looking for people who have passion, people who are there just for the love of music."

Previous workshops have involved composing a piece from scratch, but time limitations mean the Dún Laoghaire project will revolve around Prophesy. Yet Sawhney knows even this approach could have surprising results: "Of course, I'm open to amending Prophesy with lots of different little bits and I really don't know what will happen on the day."

When the Dún Laoghaire adventure ends, Sawhney will pack his bags, gather his thoughts and throw himself back into that hectic schedule. He says he has rediscovered his appetite for spending time in the DJ booth - "it's a really useful discipline for a composer or live musician because you get to see how an audience reacts to beats" - and is beginning to think about where he wants to go with his next album.

It's a theatre project, however, that excites him most at the moment. "I've just written a play called Trust for the National Theatre, which I will be directing and which will be going up next spring. I've never written or directed anything in my life so this is really, really exciting. I've worked as a musical director in theatres before, but this is something brand new for me."

Nitin Sawhney's masterclass workshops at County Hall, Dún Laoghaire, will be open to the public on Saturday, August 28th, at 1pm and 5pm. The first public performance of the piece will be at Newtownsmith Green on Sunday, August 29th, at 4.30pm.