Soon, there will be one more reason to come to Nepal. Not mountains or adventure sport, not architecture or Buddhism. Music. The Kathmandu Jazz Festival.

Almost single-handedly responsible for this is Kathmandu's very own Cadenza. Who'd have thought a quartet that began playing jazz just six years ago would become so good, they'd be invited to play at a jazz festival in Australia in 2000. And that once there, they'd create such a buzz that on the strength of their performance and reputation they could lure some of the best jazz musicians from Australia and the UK to play at Kathmandu's first ever jazz festival this March.

Over a year after they first appeared in these pages ("The Cadenza boys are back in town," #17, "Jazz in the Valley," #64), Cadenza now need no introduction. Their Saturday night gigs at the Upstairs Jazz Bar are packed and their sold-out concert with Hindustani classical musicians at the Patan Museum Square in October showcased their talent for melding different kinds of music and expanding their-and our-horizons in a way few bands can do.

The idea of the Kathmandu Jazz Festival 2002 was born in July 2000, when Cadenza were in Australia for the Palmer Street Jazz Festival. People were thronging their gigs and bands were lining up to jam with them. And then a casual conversation with assistant coordinator Susan Sellars got things going. Sellers, whose day job is working as a travel agent specialising in South Asia and who was responsible for the band's Australian debut, was discussing with Cadenza the trouble they had actually making it to the festival. And then the little group chatting wondered: what about giving Nepal its own festival, so even if musicians from here cannot go abroad, they can still be exposed to and interact with their peers from other countries.

It helped things that Cadenza were so popular, everyone from the grand old man of Australian jazz, Don Burrows, to the popular fusion band Afro Dizzi Act, was asking about having dinner with the band, and arranging to play gigs together even outside the festival, in Brisbane. They all found the prospect of playing in Kathmandu exciting and intriguing. Susan Sellers became a promoter for Cadenza and with the band's Kathmandu manager, Chhedup Bomzan, has brought together musicians from Australia, the UK, Mumbai and Dubai for a week of gigs at venues large and small, formal and casual, in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

The line-up-in addition to Cadenza, of course-includes Afro Dizzi Act from Brisbane, Bernie's London Jazz Groove from London, Groove Suppa from Mumbai and The Perry Brothers from Dubai. Other local musicians include the classical musician Prastar Homnath, Local Gandharva (See "Music of the gods," #79), and the orchestra from the Elite Co-ed School, where Cadenza founder and percussionist Nabin Chhetri teaches music. They're all great musicians, with devoted fan followings and a real taste for live performances. But the biggest name of all is Don Burrows himself.

At 74, Burrows might have been excused if he had merely sent over his best wishes. Instead, the Don, who fondly remembers the social evening he spent with Cadenza, has just agreed to perform here for little more than a token fee and a business class flight over on Singapore Airlines. Burrows, who has been conferred the MBE as well as the Order of Australia, has been at the forefront of the jazz world for close to half-a-century. He's a household name in Australia, and highly respected internationally. A superb multi-instrumentalist, who plays flute, clarinet and all the saxophones from alto to baritone, Burrows is also a composer and arranger of great note. He has performed and recorded tracks with everyone from Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme and Stephane Grappelli to Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Kate Ceberano and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Burrows has cut almost forty albums, and toured in South and North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

There's a pretty simple equation here-Burrows is playing here because of Cadenza. He was so impressed by the quality of their music and the fact that they'd hardly ever seen live jazz, learning to play off instructional videos and tapes, he even asked them to sit on the sidelines for his show with the All-Stars at the Palmer Street Festival in 2000-to soak in some of their energy. Cadenza and Burows share more here than just touchy-feely good vibes. Like Burrows, who was the first chair of a Jazz Studies program in Australia, Nabin and other members of Cadenza are also music educators. Both Burrows and Cadenza are nothing if not versatile-in a single show Burrows can go from classic swing to bossa nova to experimental modern jazz; Cadenza have been known to switch in one evening from bop to funked-up jazz to Latin-tinged original compositions to a wonderful higher species of fusion with Nepali classical musicians.

The Kathmandu Jazz Festival will run from 12-23 March and has a variety of shows lined up, from a Shivaratri gig at the Gokarna Forest Golf Reserve to a fusion evening at Patan Museum, to Jazz by the Lake in Pokhara, to the Jazzmandu All-Stars Supper Club at Kathmandu's Shangri-La Hotel. If successful, the festival will be an annual event, and a much-needed diversification of the country's travel "product". Nepal could soon be a premier Asian destination for music. Watch this space.