The Henley Festival features a music opportunity for youngsters, as well as an array of exciting events, writes NICOLA LISLE

After a spectacular 25th anniversary last year, this year's Henley Festival could have been an anti-climax. But artistic director Stewart Collins has plenty more tricks up his sleeve, from a starry line-up that includes Lesley Garrett, Alfie Boe, Hayley Westenra, the Gypsy Kings and the Proclaimers, to the usual variety of weird and wonderful entertainment that makes Henley Festival such a distinctive occasion.

"The festival is nothing if not eclectic," Stewart told me. "It covers a very broad span, from top-name artists to comedians. We've also got a jazz band from New Orleans and a carnival band from the Bahamas, so it's a very wide mix.

"It's a most incredibly rich, deep programme of great variety and quality. I'm very enthusiastic about it - there are no weak links."

New to the festival is an education initiative that is probably its most ambitious project yet - the launch of a 50-strong children's orchestra, which gives learning and performance opportunities to youngsters of primary school age who may not otherwise have had those opportunities.

Earlier this year, the Henley Festival Trust bought a complete orchestra of 50 musical instruments, and since then 50 children have been having individual coaching, as well as meeting at 'Inspiration Days', where they have been learning a composition by Colin Riley, commissioned for the festival.

The project is part of the Festival's outreach programme, Shout - Schools in Henley Outreach - and is something Stewart is particularly excited about.

"One of our most successful Shout projects was one with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in residence, and it became clear that Henley is terribly catered for in terms of instrumental tuition, and this was something we wanted to address. So we had this spectacular idea of buying a whole orchestra and giving children an introduction to these instruments and subsidising their lessons.

"Hopefully, this will kick into life musical skills and social skills that go with music-making in an ensemble. It's an extraordinary venture because there's never been anything like it."

Attending one of the Inspiration Days earlier in the year, I was immediately struck by the enthusiasm of the children and what remarkable progress they have made in a very short space of time.

"It all started in September last year with the workshop days in schools, where professional musicians came in and introduced all the different instruments of the orchestra to the children," explained Mandy Beard, the festival's Community Projects Manager. "Then in January they started learning. Usually children would learn for a couple of years before joining an orchestra, but in this instance we felt that the social side of music-making is important. It's a big experiment, so we'll see how it works."

Also extraordinary is the fact that composer Colin Riley is creating a piece with ideas from the children.

"He's very realistic about beginners, especially young children, being able to read music and play and sit in an orchestra," Mandy explained. "It's an awful lot of skills to accumulate all at once, so there's not much emphasis on written notation, at the moment. He's more interested in improvisation. He gives the children a theme to get them started and they improvise around that. Colin then takes that away and thinks, that's what they're able to do, that's what they like playing. So he's building a piece with the children very involved, which is obviously quite an inspiration for them. We've also got a blog on our website, where the children can talk to Colin and send him messages.

"It's going to be a great piece, I think. Obviously very ambitious, but, hopefully, it will be something the audience will want to listen to."

The children will perform the new piece on the Saturday afternoon of the festival, as part of a family concert given by the Henley Symphony Orchestra. Included in the programme will be Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, and two former students, who were supported by the Henley Festival Trust, will be making guest appearances.

Elsewhere in the festival will be the usual array of oddities, of which the quirkiest, surely, is the "car-smashing symphony", taking place on the main stage on Saturday evening. In what must be one of the strangest events ever, German actor-musicians Christian von Richthofen and Kristian Badger will smash up a car on stage and turn the parts into a symphony orchestra.

"This is absolutely wonderful, because it's so stunningly different," said Stewart. "The audience will be surprised to see a car sitting on the stage! One thing that marks the festival out as being unusual are the silly, surreal, absurd acts like this. Organising the festival is like sprinkling magic dust - there's all these surprising things happening everywhere, turning it into a sparkling, magical kingdom of strange and wonderful things. As people come in this year they will see a sculpture of a large, sparkling stiletto shoe - that's the flavour of the festival."

The Henley Festival runs from Wednesday until July 13. Further details and booking at www.henley-festival.co.uk or call 01491 843404.