Bell-ringing to open Cultural Olympiad year

Ping! - a collaboration between sports men and women and a string quartet - will premiere in March

A new church bell-ringing composition will bring in the new year as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

Howard Skempton's Five Rings Triples will premiere at the All Saints Church in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, as part of the New Music 20x12 project.

Twenty new works - each 12 minutes in length - have been created which aim to capture the spirit of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The works feature a mixture of genres including opera, jazz and beatbox.

A number of composers from the world of of contemporary classical music including Skempton, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Sally Beamish were commissioned as part of New Music 20x12.

Premieres will take place across the UK at concert halls, arts centres, festivals and public spaces.

Trafalgar Square will host XX/XY, an "East meets West fusion of new music", composed by Liz Liew and Andy Leung as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations, on 29 January.

Composer David Bruce's commission, Fire, which will be performed in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral on 25 May, will feature a fire artist, an ensemble of horns and "a massed community chorus".

The Warwick Arts Centre will premiere Ping! - a collaboration between composer Joe Cutler, the Coull String Quartet and the Fusion table tennis club which explores the sounds and rhythms created by the sports men and women - on 3 March.

The project will culminate with the performance of all 20 pieces over the weekend of 13-15 July at London's Southbank Centre.

All the works, which will be performed at least three times each in 2012, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and released digitally.