AN INDIAN carnival will provide a spectacular end to this year's Canterbury Festival.

Storyteller Vayu Naidu, Strange Cargo and Kinetika have been commissioned to come up with something as spectacular as the Yemanja procession which launched last year's event.

However, organisers have decided that the Indian carnival will be the finale this year on the last night of the festival on October 25.

As usual, Canterbury Cathedral will host several of the large concerts, starting with a performance of Mahler's 3rd Symphony on October 11, the festival's opening night.

The following evening Sir Roger Norrington will conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a programme of music by Schutz and Gabrieli and the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble The Sixteen will end their 2003 pilgrimage tour in the Cathedral.

Following last year's enormous success of Robert King's Coronation of King George ll he will return this year with his Venetian spectacular Lo Sposolizio. The final night's concert in the Cathedral will be a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem by Canterbury Choral Society.

The Marlowe Theatre will host Phoenix Dance Company for two nights and English Touring Opera for the second week with productions of Handel's Ariodante and Britten's The Turn of the Screw.

At Kent University's Gulbenkian Theatre there will be a varied programme of drama, dance, music and one-man shows, including Film Night's Barry Norman and Richard Ingrams and Ian Hislop. I Fagiolini returns with a production of Vecchi's L'Amfiparnaso and there is also a staging of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood.

Shakespeare will be performed at the Theatre Royal, Margate, as well as jazz from the Stan Tracey Trio, while the popular Festival Club will have its usual full programme of diverse music. There will also be talks and exhibitions.

Festival director Mark Deller and marketing and publicity officer Jo Tuffs are both leaving after this year's event. Rosie Turner, from Belfast, who joins the festival team in August, will replace Mr Deller.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has agreed to be the festival's patron.

* Full details of all festival events will be available from July when the free brochure will be published.