VisitBritain: Edinburgh International Festival 2015 programme unveiled

Edinburgh International Festival Director Fergus Linehan has unveiled his first programme.

Edinburgh, 2015-3-28 — /Travel PR News/ — Festival 2015 runs from Friday 7 August to Monday 31 August and welcomes over 2,300 artists from 39 nations to perform in Scotland’s magnificent capital city.

The Irishman, whose previous roles have seen him head up the Sydney Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival and Vivid LIVE, revealed big international stars across the performing arts, and new areas of programming for the International Festival including more diverse genres of music and family focused shows.

This year’s Festival opens with a large, free, public outdoor event which sees a spectacular digitally animated artwork projected onto the front of the Usher Hall, set to music. The Harmonium Project, outside the Usher Hall celebrates Edinburgh’s relationship with architecture, learning, music and its role in developing technology. 59 Productions, which combines technology and art to amazing effect will create an event which celebrates 50 years of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, setting a recording of the Chorus, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and principal conductor Peter Oundjian performing John Adams’s Harmonium to stunning visuals projected onto the outside of the Hall. The images are formed by data gathered at the University of Edinburgh as part of its research into wearable technologies and facial mapping as well as its work with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus on the physical impact of singing.

Over the last 50 years the Festival Chorus has demonstrated the levels of excellence that can be achieved by joining in a creative community. Each member enjoys singing as an amateur but the Chorus has been recognised by conductors from Herbert von Karajan to Donald Runnicles as one of the best in the world. In its 50th anniversary season it sings major works by Brahms, Sibelius, Mozart, Berlioz, Beethoven and Adams with all of Scotland’s orchestras and principal conductors as well as the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Making their first appearances at the Edinburgh International Festival this year are artistsincluding Juliette Binoche, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Lang Lang, Sufjan Stevens, Sylvie Guillem, Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, Max Richter, Simon McBurney, Enda Walsh andYuja Wang.

Celebrating its role in supporting and commissioning great artists from around the world to create new work, the Festival this year hosts new productions from Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, Complicite and Simon McBurney, Enda Walsh and Donnacha Dennehy, Ivo van Hove and Anne Carson, Scotland’s Citizens Theatre, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant.

Looking to develop future audiences for the Festival, the introduction of work conceived for young people into the main programme sees incredible experiences being offered in Dragon byVox Motus, National Theatre of Scotland and Tianjin Children’s Arts Theatre; and in a family concert the day before the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert in which the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Parisian technologists Chevalvert, specialists in creating visual spectacular concerts, join in presenting music from across the Festival.

The Festival continues to offer great value for young ticket buyers (18 or under, or 26 or under and in full time education) with a discount of 50% available on all tickets from the opening of ticket sales.

A new series of late night music events, Hub Sessions sees the Festival debuts of Anna Calvi, Oneohtrix Point Never, Bryce Dessner and Richard Reed Parry. Max Richter andDaniel Hope join the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for a concert at the Playhouse featuring Recomposed and Memoryhouse, Sufjan Stevens kicks off his European tour at the Festival, and Franz Ferdinand & Sparks come together for a rare live performance alongside the launch of their album.

Celebrating great Scottish work and artists, this year’s Festival offers people the world premiere of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark in a production by the Citizens Theatre written and directed by David Greig and Graham Eatough and supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund, alongside opportunities for locals and international visitors to see two exisiting, very successful works, Dragon and Untitled Project’s and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner directed byStewart Laing, showcased at the Festival.

Scotland’s three fine orchestras, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are not only playing central roles in the Usher Hall series, but also teaming up with international artists at the Playhouse, Festival Theatre and The Hub. RSNO plays Mahler’s Symphony No 7 for Ballett am Rhein in Seven, choreographed by Martin Schläpfer. The BBC SSO is joined by Max Richter and Daniel Hope in the Playhouse for Recomposed and Memoryhouse. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra performs Wave Movements, composed by Richard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner with images by Hiroshi Sugimoto in Hub Sessions.

One of the world’s largest fireworks concerts continues to bring the season to a close. OnMonday 31 August the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert will launch over 400,000 fireworks into the sky above Edinburgh Castle, choreographed to live music from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, an unmissable evening. Virgin Money has recently confirmed its support of the event for a further three years.

Remaining one of the world’s largest and most diverse curated festivals, as well as one of the most accessible with substantial discounts and a low entry price tickets, the Edinburgh International Festival continues to attract people from across the globe, expecting its audiences to travel from around 70 nations this year to be part of the global cultural celebration in Edinburgh.

A new partnership with BBC Arts online reconceives the Festival’s artists’ conversations to make them available to a wider audience online. The free tickets will be announced and issued on twitter, more information can be found at eif.co.uk/artistsconversations

2015 also marks the realignment of the International Festival with the dates of the other August festivals in Edinburgh, including the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Art Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Festival 2015

Opera in 2015 sees two very different approaches to opera and to Mozart. Director Barrie Kosky, Komische Oper, and British theatre company 1927 have created a spectacular boundary-busting production of The Magic Flute, blending animated film and live action.  Iván Fischer’s The Marriage of Figaro with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and a fantastic line up of soloists, breaks down the staged production and puts the orchestra and conductor on stage to assist in the dramatic action. Opera in Concert  at the Usher Hall celebrates satirical works with Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore performed byScottish Opera and Richard Egarr. The Festival presents Landmark Productions andWide Open Opera’s world premiere of Donnacha Dennehy’s The Last Hotel marking great Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s first opera libretto.

Dance this year brings big names to the Festival. Sylvie Guillem brings her Life in Progresswith new works by Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant,  a Sadler’s Wells production. Recent collaborator with Akram, Israel Galván brings his new, revolutionary form of flamenco. Two major European ballet companies Ballett Zürich and Ballett am Rhein bring very different contemporary programmes featuring choreography by Wayne McGregor and Christian Spuck in the first, and a setting of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony by Martin Schläpfer with theRoyal Scottish National Orchestra playing live in the second. And choreographer and theatre maker Alain Platel and les ballets C de la B and NTGent bring a celebration of brass bands inEn avant, marche!

Theatre showcases world premieres and commissions from some of the best theatre makers working in English language theatre, with new work from Complicite and Simon McBurney,Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, Citizens Theatre and David Greig and Graham Eatough, and Ivo van Hove and Juliette Binoche joining forces in Antigone, a Barbican and Les Theatres de la Ville de Luxembourg production, in association with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. TheVolksbühne Berlin makes its first appearance at the Festival with visual artist Dieter Roth’s ‘unstageable play’ Murmel Murmel, a great success in Berlin. And for the first time the Festival will lend its profile and reach as an international showcase to already proven successful Scottish work, this year presenting Dragon and Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

Great names in classical music flock to Edinburgh this summer in a programme of 51 concerts and recitals. Long established Festival favourites including Iván Fischer, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Andrew Davis, William Christie, Valery Gergiev and Donald Runnicles all return in 2015, joined by Gianandrea Noseda, Robin Ticciati and Vasily Petrenko on the podium. 2015 marks the first Festival appearances of major international soloists Yuja Wang, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Rudolf Buchbinder, Colin Currie and Lang Lang.

Festival 2015 fills the Usher Hall with great music starting with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performing Brahms in the Opening Concert with Donald Runnicles and theEdinburgh Festival Chorus, and concluding with the ground-shaking The Rite of Springperformed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev on Sunday 30 August. In between a packed programme of international and UK artists includes Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony with the ground-breaking St. Lawrence String Quartet making its first Edinburgh appearance, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra makes a welcome return under the direction of Vasily Petrenko, Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by the superb Iván Fischer.

Celebrated Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder plays all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, around 10 hours of incredible music. Fantastic young performers onstage at the Usher Hall include Anne-Sophie Mutter’s Virtuosi, the European Union Youth Orchestra, the National Youth Choir of Scotland and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

The line up for the late evening Hub Sessions is a mix of jazz, alternate, folk influenced and fusion music. Artists appearing include Chilly Gonzales featuring Kaiser Quartett, Robert Glasper Trio, Jason Moran’s All Rise – A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller, King Creosote’s From Scotland with Love, Anna Calvi and  Heritage Orchestra, Oneohtrix Point Never and his score for Magnetic Rose and Bullet Hell Abstraction IV, Alexi Murdoch, Wave Movements byRichard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestrawith images by Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Sufjan Steven’s score for Aaron and Alex Craig’s film Round-Up performed by Yarn/Wire.

There are some great one night only music events across the Festival; Max Richter, Daniel Hope and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra joining to perform Recomposed andMemoryhouse; (FFS) Franz Ferdinand & Sparks in a rare live performance, and Sufjan Stevens kicking off his European tour for Carrie & Lowell at the Edinburgh Playhouse.

To celebrate the presence of some of the greatest creative minds of our time at the heart of the Festival, Scottish photographer, Gavin Evans, was commissioned to create photographic portraits of a cross section of artists from the 2015 Festival programme. Each of the eight striking portraits – Nicola Benedetti, Juliette Binoche, Iván Fischer, Alasdair Gray, Robert Lepage, Simon McBurney, Jason Moran and Anne-Sophie Mutter –  is used in a series of eight different brochure covers, and will represent Festival 2015 over the coming months.

The Festival’s Insights this year include a lecture demonstration from Chilly Gonzales and Kaiser Quartett, talks on Antigone and The Scottish Supernatural in association with the University of Edinburgh, Andrew Graham-Dixon on the British Gothic, a masterclass with Complicite and symposium and professional development opportunities. The second edition of International Festival Encounters, a five day summer school on developing artistic entrpeneurship, is presented in association with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh.

Colin Currie will give the Young People’s Lecture explaining his passion for music and performance and incorporating marimba demonstrations.

Tickets for all events at the Festival go on sale on Saturday 28 March at 10am, unless signed up for priority booking which opens on Thursday 19 March at 10am.

Media contact: Susie Gray 07810 383 091/0131 473 2020 susie.gray@eif.co.uk