THE ROLLING fluidity of Irish flute and the staccato flicker of flamenco guitar… distinctive sounds both, though perhaps not the most readily compatible.

Yet both are about to hit the road together – not to mention more than a few island ferries – courtesy of the Celtic-flamenco fusion of Voyage de Nuit. The ensemble, embarking on a Scottish Arts Council-sponsored Tune Up tour, features the EdinbuADVERTISEMENTrgh-based Irish flautist and singer Nuala Kennedy with Azulejos, the flamenco-jazz outfit led by the French guitarist and composer Philippe Guidat. For the purposes of the tour, Azulejos features a cosmopolitan line-up of Guidat's regular percussionist, the young Bolivian Diego Landivar; Kennedy's frequent collaborator, the English accordionist Luke Daniels, and the ubiquitous Scots-based Brazilian double-bassist Mario Caribe.

The project has its origins in a first encounter between Kennedy and Guidat in 2007 at the International World Music Residency in New York, where their initial sparrings led to a fruitful playing and writing partnership. "We lived for two and a half weeks in this upstate New York artists' colony in an amazing location," recalls the flautist. "It was very open-ended, and open-minded.

"In late 2007 and 2008, Philippe came over and we did a few small concerts in the Highlands as a duo, trying out ideas and seeing how people took to the combination of flamenco and jazz and then the old-fashioned traditional music. They seemed to like it, and it was then that we thought we might develop it into something bigger."

Kennedy, originally from Dundalk, has been living in Scotland for some time now, first emerging as a talent as flautist in the vivacious trio Fine Friday, with fiddler Anna-Wendy Stevenson and singer-guitarist Kris Drever. Her first recording under her own name, The New Shoes, met with a warm reception, and became an Irish Times album of the week when it came out two years ago.

Ask her what the Voyage de Nuit collaboration sounds like, and she replies candidly that so far as the tour is concerned, she is not exactly sure yet.

"When we started working together we were working from a rhythmic basis because Philippe's from a flamenco-jazz background and I'm from a Celtic background, but we both play dance music. We're writing stuff that is quite structured, but with areas for improvisation."

Are there any concerns about the fine and sometimes wobbly line between creating the white heat of inspired fusion and subsiding into what ethnomusicologists sometimes describe as cultural grey-out? "I know what you mean," she says, "but I don't feel that with this. It's not like we're diluting traditional Irish music, or jazz, or flamenco.

"We're really trying to start again. It's been a very honest exchange between two musicians who both do their own thing, writing our music from very different backgrounds but both trying to communicate very openly with each other."

She laughs: "Philippe said to me when we first met, 'Celtic folk music? Sorry, it's not for me (puts on ham continental accent]." He's so dramatic, and I said, 'What do mean it's not for you?' and we started talking, then working together, and now he's really interested and excited at being involved on this level with folk music. He's playing on the new album I'm working on and I played on his last one."