Last Friday evening in Dingle, that westward town which crouches at the foot of Mount Brandon and Eagle, the rafters on Green Street were reverberating. Was it that portly redcoated gentleman doing a practice run with the reindeers? No, the rafters were being lifted during the unique Ceolta Nollag o Chorca Dhuibhne Christmas Concert in St Mary's church.

The programme for the night combined performances by the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) with sean nos singing by Aine ui Cheallaigh, who is from the Ring Gaeltacht. Among the pieces performed by the ICO were T.C. Kelly's O'Carolan's Suite; Micheal O Suilleabh ain's Oiche Nollag; and Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Aine ui Cheallaigh sang Le Coinnle na nAingeal, and Suantrai na Maighdne.

Philip King of Hummingbird Productions, the energetic force behind such well-known projects as Bringing It All Back Home, and River of Sound, moved to the Dingle peninsula a year ago. After running some successful concerts in the Sceilig Hotel, he was contacted by Maire Begley of the music-making Begley clan on the peninsula. "The idea was that we would try and organise a further concert to raise money for St Elizabeth's Hospital here in Dingle."

The idea got bigger. Fionnuala Hunt, the director of the ICO, was approached and asked to bring the 17-piece orchestra to West Kerry. She thinks that it was the first time that a concert of this kind had been held in Dingle. "We're based in Limerick, and because our orchestra is so small, we can take it round the regions much more easily than say, the Symphony orchestra. Our aim is to try to bring classical music to the regions." The ICO recently played on Inishbofin, so they are obviously drawn to remote sea-washed locations.

As the idea got bigger, so did the need for a suitable venue. "All the public events here take place in the hotels, because there's no hall," King pointed out. But there was that lofty cavern of wood and stone on Green Street which is St Mary's Church, which the parish priest, Padraig O Fiannachta, was more than happy be used for the concert. Recently created a Monsignor, King describes this remarkable man as "a mixture of traditional priest and something almost shamanistic".

The church provided the visual context for the concert, and triggered off thought processes in Philip King's busy head. "Since the venue was so good to look at, we knew we had to film it," he said. They got on with building a temporary stage for the orchestra and selling the £10 tickets and mused further about filming the event.

'Twas three weeks before Christmas and the phone call was made to RTE's Neasa Ni Chinneide. She looked at her schedule and found a seasonal slot for the concert. Down they'd come, says she, and so it was that the week before Christmas, a unique combination of classical and traditional music came to Dingle, was performed there, and left Dingle furled up in reels of film.

In Seamus Heaney's poem, The Given Note, the fiddler goes out to the most westerly Blasket, hears the strange music of seals and recreates it on the mainland in a tune.

He took it Out of wind off mid-Atlantic. Sill he maintains, from nowhere. It comes off the bow gravely, Rephrases itself into the air. On Christmas Day, the music sung and played in Dingle - not far away from those arcane Blasket Islands - will rephrase itself into homes across Ireland. Not quite from nowhere, but from a place not far off it.

Ceolta Nollag o Chorca Dhuibhne will be broadcast on Christmas Day at 7.05 p.m. on Network 2.