IT is modelled on the next great, popcorn-crunching Hollywood blockbuster but the starring roles are played by percussion instruments.

Noise Ensemble is a new and unique type of musical theatre, clashing together virtuoso drumming, energetic dance, stunning lighting effects and an intriguing video backstory. All these elements are bound together by a contemporary classical concert score that takes percussion music into a new orbit.

Noise Ensemble's creator, young British composer Ethan Lewis Maltby who already has a number of film soundtracks under his belt has constructed a two-hour spectacular that he believes will chime with a cinema-loving audience.

This show has the musical richness of a film score, but with the beats brought to life on stage.

Maltby has combined the energy of live performance of a range of musical styles with real instruments from marimbas and vibraphone to every size of drum.

Twenty-nine year-old Maltby was the first percussionist to win a national music award while still a student and he played with orchestras in his home county of Northamptonshire from an early age.

After studying at Canterbury Christ Church University, he took a job there as a lecturer in film music, and started a percussion group while developing his own composing but one of his aims was always to get percussionists out of the corner and into centre stage.

"I grew up playing in orchestras, after developing an interest in hitting things when my parents bought me a drum and cymbal set at the age of two!" he says. "But in an orchestra, the drummers and percussionists are hidden at the back. When I went to university, I got into film, and then theatre. Noise Ensemble was a way of combining these, bringing drama to music, and giving percussion a chance to take the spotlight.

"What I wanted to do with Noise Ensemble was take percussion instruments from the back of the orchestra and put them right at the front: there are some amazing players, and they deserve a chance to shine."

Drums are at the heart of Noise Ensemble and elements of the show have notes of eastern mysticism.

Maltby cites his influences as spanning from Thomas Newman, composer of the score to The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty, and Mark Isham (October Sky and Crash) to the Hollywood bombastic' James Horner, who wrote the music for Titanic.

"People sometimes turn their noses up at film music, certainly in the academic world, as they don't consider it real' music," he complains. "That is a bit blinkered. Some of the finest contemporary composers write for film."

Back to Noise Ensemble, and at a popular taster show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, the show received excited reviews. A writer for The Scottish Herald believed that this show would "do for drumming what Riverdance has done for Irish dance."

At any rate, a promotional DVD that producers Louder Than Words made of the show has persuaded some 30 theatres around the UK including the Nuffield to sign up to the first full-length tour of Noise Ensemble.

Performed by ten skilled musicians, the new show is almost two hours long and its score includes tuned instruments such as marimbas (wooden bars struck with a mallet), vibraphones and glockenspiels as well as numerous types of drum around 50 instruments in total.

Noise Ensemble is not just about the music however. Some numbers feature comic elements: a drumming "match" play-off, or tambourines thrown across a circle of players to create the beats. The movement is all choreographed and other numbers include dancelike sequences, as the players move in unison and strike each other's drumsticks in between beats.

After national auditions of around 300 virtuoso percussionists in 2005, the producers picked a team.

The cast of four men and six women, all in their 20s and 30s, are spending their time in furious, calorie-burning rehearsal for the upcoming tour.

The result will bring to life a film score on stage.

"I guess its closest match is Stomp, but with real instruments" says Maltby. "I think it is more like a classical concert, but with elements of rock 'n' roll including impressive lighting design, costume and video a true percussion spectacular."