It is 30 years since a group of York-based early music enthusiasts were given seed money by a local compost manufacturer to establish the first festival of its kind in the country. In those days it was not uncommon to hear Monteverdi's brass parts played on alto saxophones, as baroque trumpets were thin on the ground. So it is a neat indication of how far the early music movement has come that the 30th anniversary celebrations should get under way with a perfectly intonated peal of six baroque trumpets in the minster.

The coronation ceremony of George II was lavishly reconstructed by the King's Consort with a dramatic sense of dynamics; from the fragrant response settings of Thomas Tallis to a roaring drum battery you could feel in the pit of your stomach. Yet the 1727 ceremony is chiefly distinguished by four anthems penned at short notice by Handel. The best-known is the ubiquitous but still brazenly magnificent Zadok the Priest, the only anthem to have held its place at the coronation of every subsequent monarch.

The early music scene is still largely defined by its personalities: Renaissance wind ensemble Les Haulz et les Bas revealed a new side to its character as an Islamic marching band while shock-headed French countertenor Dominique Visse enlivened a lunch- time programme of Janequin motets by yelping like a dog and conducting with a pencil.

Yet if there is one person who embodies the popular acceptance of early music it has to be the newly ennobled Dame Emma Kirkby, whose account of Purcell's Dido with the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists was enhanced by scintillating baroque trumpeting from Crispian Steele-Perkins. Definitive proof then that 30 years since the first, fertiliser-sponsored festival, where there's muck there's brass.

· Festival continues until Saturday. Box office: 01904 658338.