NCH, Dublin, Mon 8pm 25-35 01-4170000 BÉAL FESTIVAL Dublin Wed, Thurs bealfestival.wordpress.com

Veteran conductor Neville Marriner’s appearances with the Orchestra of St Cecilia have been among the highlights of recent years. Marriner, who turned 86 last April, is back for a concert at the NCH on Monday, when he will conduct Beethoven’s First, Second and Fifth Symphonies.

Later in the week, the first-ever Béal Festival takes place in Dublin on Wednesday and Thursday. It promises to explore "the strange territory where text and music meet". And no, the festival's directors, Elizabeth Hilliard and David Bremner, are not talking about Kurt Schwitters's Ursonate, Ernst Toch's Geographical Fugue, or the weird and wonderful work of the Austrian composer and poet Gerhard Rühm. They're looking at newer work: pieces for choir by Jonathan Nangle, Gráinne Mulvey, Laura Kilty, Dónal Sarsfield and David Bremner, by the Milltown Chamber Choir under Orla Flanagan (TCD Chapel, Thurs), and a programme of works by Ian Wilson, Ailís Ní Ríain, Derek Ball, Fergal Dowling, Johanne Heraty, Mauricio Cristales Armas and Kala Pierson, performed by soprano Elizabeth Hilliard and clarinettist Paul Roe (NCH Kevin Barry Room, Wed).

The featured poets are Billy Mills, Emily Crossland, Maurice Scully and Catherine Walsh, and there's also a reading of John Ashbery's The Systemby Ingrid Craigie (above) with a background of improvising musicians (Goethe-Institut, Thurs, 12.30pm), as well as a late-night session titled "conversation drifts up the ventilation shaft" (Shebeen Chic, Wed 9.30pm).