IT'S a small world and music travels it well, as Holmfirth-based composer Barry Russell has discovered. He's received an e-mail from a choreographer who said that she'd found a cassette for sale of Yorkshire Classic Brass with a tune on it that she loved.

She hoped that he was the Barry Russell credited with writing the tune because it had inspired her to create a full-length dance/theatre piece based on it. Now all she need to discover was whose permission she needed to use it.

Nothing unusual in that you might think except the music, variations on Happy Birthday, was recorded almost 20 years ago, and the choreographer was e-mailing from New York.

Barry, understandably tickled pink by choreographer Rachel Cohen's find, confessed he was indeed "that Barry Russell". A video of the piece that Rachel has created in America has winged its way across the Atlantic.

Rachel is director of Racoco Productions in New York which she describes as "a small not-for-profit company that does somewhat oddball crossover performances somewhere between dance and theater".

Not surprisingly, Rachel was fascinated to discover that Barry's music is similarly anything but traditional. He writes everything from pub operas to large-scale works for whole communities.

"I'd love to hear more of your work. I'm really intrigued by the descriptions of it on the website, the pub operas sound wonderful. I like that there is an element of humour and that you go outside traditional music circles. I'm trying to do the same in dance."

Music is all about connections, so who knows if this particular email link up will sprout a Holme Valley-New York contemporary music/American dance connection in the future?