Nigel Kennedy, who plays violin with the Irish Chamber Orchestra this week, isn't interested in musical ghettos but in music that 'does something to my heart', he tells Aengus Collins.

Nigel Kennedy is eating pistachio nuts on a long white sofa in the rehearsal room downstairs in his London home. A long room with a grand piano at one end and doors into the garden at the other, it is comfortably cluttered with the paraphernalia of music-making - violin cases, music stands, sheet music, a stereo system precariously balanced across two dining chairs. Oddly, a toilet-seat in the shape of a violin's lower half rests against a wall, and six humidifiers hum in concert, to protect his violin.

Since the earliest days of his career it has been clear that Kennedy is remarkable. His childhood years as a protégé of Sir Yehudi Menuhin were followed by studies at the Juilliard School in New York. When he returned to London in 1977, aged 21, his Royal Festival Hall début (playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, under Riccardo Muti) set him on his way as a soloist of the highest rank. His first recording, the Elgar Violin Concerto (with the London Philharmonic under Vernon Hadley), was awarded the prestigious Gramophone Record of the Year in 1985. His 1989 recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was the bestselling classical recording ever.

But Kennedy has never seemed fully at ease with the world into which his talents launched him. When I ask him what he thinks of the current state of the classical music world, he laughs.

"I'm perfectly happy with the classical music world," he says, "because I'm not in it. For me, classical music is great to be involved in, but the classical music world is full of Etonians and Laura Ashley people trying to tell artists what to do. I don't want to be told what to do. I want complete control over my musical agenda. So I'm very happy to be a visitor to classical music, but not to be a part of that world."

Kennedy is passionate and erudite when he talks about classical music, and he is deeply committed to his classical playing; but he is also possessed of what seems to be an unquenchable thirst for other forms of musical expression. As a 16-year-old student in New York, he made his Carnegie Hall "début" in an impromptu performance with jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli.

He continues to thrive on jazz performance, and after classical concerts will frequently seek out a local club where he can play into the early hours. He is an aficionado of rock music from the 1960s and 1970s, has recorded albums inspired by the work of Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, and has just released an album entitled East Meets East, which takes him in yet another new direction. Recorded with the Polish trio, Kroke (which is the Yiddish word for Kraków), this new departure marries Jewish klezmer music with a range of traditional influences from eastern Europe.

Kennedy's eclecticism has not endeared him to all. His vibrant dislike of the classical music establishment is frequently reciprocated. Sir John Drummond, a former director of BBC Radio 3 and of the Proms, once dismissed Kennedy's success as a "triumph of philistinism," while pianist András Schiff regards him as an embodiment of bad taste in classical music. Many would like to see Kennedy devoting himself quietly to his classical playing, and dispensing with the jazz, the Hendrix, and the larger-than-life brashness of his public persona.

But non-classical music is not a dispensable appendage which Kennedy has tacked on to the classical core of his music-making. His classical playing is as good as it is precisely because it stems from the same impulse which drives him to explore other musical forms. There is no separating the various facets of his musical life.

"I'm not interested in types of music, ghettos of music," he says. "I'm just a normal musician with a healthy appetite for exploring music. I'm interested in any music that does something to my heart and to my spirit."

Kennedy's virtuoso technical abilities are self-evident, but the richness of his playing lies in the musical philosophy that underpins it. The human element of live performance is paramount. There is a generosity in his playing, an openness, particularly in the way he understands his relationship with the members of the orchestras he works with.

In this respect, his love of more informal musical genres reflects his seriousness as a musician, not his lack of seriousness. Kennedy brings rigour and single-minded dedication to his classical playing, but he also wants to bring to it something of the intuitive direction that fascinates him in jazz and traditional music playing.

Again and again as we discuss classical music, there comes across the sense that what Kennedy strives for in the classical auditorium are the kind of musical relationships that he enjoys in the jazz club. He dislikes the idea of conductors ("I never liked it - some egocentric maniac waving his arms around, telling everyone what to do"). He enjoys working with smaller, chamber orchestras - he's in Ireland this weekend for concerts with the Irish Chamber Orchestra - because "there's much more rhythmic freedom, more communication, and it allows the orchestra members to become a catalyst in the music-making".

Kennedy wants to feel a close bond with his fellow musicians. It's why rehearsal time is so important to him. In 2001, he threatened never to play with an orchestra in the UK again because of the lack of adequate rehearsal time he was being given.

"With no rehearsal time, you can do a professional job," he says, "you can play all the notes in the right order and at the right time, but it makes for a bland and homogeneous performance. I want to be able to recognise the faces of the people in the orchestra, and to draw a unique interpretation of the music out of them. And that takes time."

In recent years, the centre of gravity in Kennedy's life has begun to shift away from Britain. Perhaps it was inevitable, as musically, he was never really at home there. There is no question of severing his relationship with Britain totally - his young son lives there, he has two homes there, and he could hardly drag himself away from his beloved Aston Villa football team. But for the past two years, more of his time has been spent in Poland than in England. He has close personal ties to Poland through his wife, Agnieszka. But it is also clear that he is captivated by the country's musical culture, by its wealth of live musical forms.

"It would be difficult to find a town with more live music per square metre than there is in Kraków," he begins. "There is music everywhere: there are gypsies playing in the streets; there are jazz clubs where I can play until five in the morning whenever I feel like it; I have my orchestra there [he is artistic director of the Polish Chamber Orchestra] who are willing to rehearse as hard as I ever want to; and I have my friends Kroke, who I play traditional music with. So for live music, I have every avenue I want in one city. That's unusual, I think."

In England, Kennedy's eclecticism is frowned upon by the establishment; in Poland, it is not remarked upon. It must come as a relief. But does he feel at home in Kraków?

"Certainly, as a musician, spiritually, I would say so. Yes."

Nigel Kennedy tours with the Irish Chamber Orchestra this month, performing a programme comprising four Bach concertos and a composition by Elaine Agnew. City Hall, Cork, Friday; University Concert Hall, Limerick, Saturday; National Concert Hall, Dublin, Sunday; St Mary's Church, Dingle, Monday.

East Meets East by Nigel Kennedy and Kroke is out now on EMI.