Organist Olivier Latry performs at the Festival Hall on May 31 [William Beaucardet]

IT’S so profoundly true it’s virtually a commonplace, but music is and always has been one of the great international experiences. It passes freely across barriers, customs, tongues. It draws people together. And a notable event to celebrate this fact takes place at Camden’s Cecil Sharp House on June 1 – called Along the Road and involving musicians from diverse backgrounds, playing instruments you wouldn’t usually hear side by side in concert: tabla, kora, violin, viola, double bass… Beyond the music, they’ll tell stories of their life journeys from Europe, Africa, Asia, wherever. And as organised by the enterprising NWLive Arts company, there will be participation from homeless people, telling their own stories of displacement and travel. Details efdss.org

• This year’s St Marylebone Festival, based at the parish church in Marylebone Road, isn’t the concentrated event it used to be but spread across the year. And part it erupts out of the void on May 27 with a come-and-sing performance of Stainer’s die-hard oratorio The Crucifixion. You rehearse all afternoon, perform at 6pm. Could be fun. stmarylebone.org

• It’s that time of year when country-house opera comes to London, courtesy of Opera Holland Park whose season starts May 30 with a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Performances run to June 24. And they play as part of a summer programme that includes Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Puccini’s Boheme, Gilbert & Sullivan’s spooky, high-camp Ruddigore, and a new opera by Jonathan Dove called Itch that I’ll say more about another time: it promises to be a major premiere. operahollandpark.com

• As I’ve said before in this column, it’s a standard phenomenon for composers to vanish off the radar when they die, and it can take serious efforts to keep them in performance. So it’s good to see Kenneth Leighton – composer of sublime choral works like the Coventry Carol setting many of us love to sing at Christmas – being recognised with a tribute concert at St John’s, Waterloo, on May 26: londinium-voices.org.uk
And his contemporary Peter Maxwell Davies is remembered at Wigmore Hall on the same day, with his classically abrasive Eight Songs for a Mad King: a bizarre rant, written in 1969 but retaining the power to shock. I can’t help wondering if it’s being done here as an adjunct to the recent coronation. But whatever the excuse, it’s an extraordinary piece of (maybe) music. Steel yourself and go. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• One of the world’s most celebrated organists, Olivier Latry, comes to the Royal Festival Hall on May 31, performing mighty repertoire including transcriptions of Wagner operas. But more poignantly, he’ll also be playing Messiaen’s Apparition de l’eglise eternelle: a vision of the time-defying Church given a certain edge since Latry’s home-base at Notre Dame in Paris suffered its appalling fire. As the presiding organist there, he’s spent some years now with no roof above his head. But hopefully for not much longer. The “eglise” is looking more “eternelle” than we feared. southbankcentre.co.uk