Tuesday 25 August 2015

EIF Music & Arts & Stories at Edinburgh International festival




Trading Stories: Walls Coming Down

Or are they? At Celtic Connections festival Glasgow certainly the orchestras mix with folk musicians. Good example Nicola Benedetti and Shetland fiddler Ali Bain, composer and accordionist Phil Cunningham along with the Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis  - composed together for Benedetti's Scottish album and the results were magnificent. Joni Mitchell cites Debussy as a big influence on her music. So we might say this is nothing new. Alex Ross (American music critic) writes that classical music for stuffed shirts is not how it should be. 

This year the new director of the EIF, Edinburgh International festival, Fergus Linehan, aims to be more inclusive and to expand the music program with more contemporary composers in the main festival.

*Wave Movements -  28th August, The Hub, Compositions from - Bryce Dessner of The National, and Richard Reed Perry of Arcade Fire. Along with the images of Hiroslu Sugimoto's 1980s seascape film. 

*Sufjan Stevens -  30th August, The Playhouse (also an oboe player)
*Franz Ferdinand & Sparks (FFS) - 24th August, Festival Theatre
*Idlewild - 17th August, Assembly Rooms
 
*Magner's Summer Nights - Ross bandstand Princes Street gardens - headlined with the Flaming Lips, Waterboys, James

*Musicians at EIBF, Edinburgh International Book festival 2015, will include talks by -
 Edwyn Collins, Tracy Thorn, Stuart David, Viv Albertine.  

PLUS - Writing Across Boundaries, 5.30 28th August , Edinburgh International book festival 2015.
*Theatre
Traverse - A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Shakespeare in the Gardens

*Free Fringe - large scale busking!

One of the top aspects of EF is the way it embraces all the arts - enjoys challenging expectations and confronting unknown boundaries. 
Many musicians write; many painters compose; many songwriters paint (Dylan, Joni are supreme examples).  And the many ways that the different artistic expressions can compliment each other.

Perhaps festivals and Edinburgh Fringe are about the vocies of grassroots artists, where we all can have an artists voice.  

Edinburgh Festival is one of the oldest and the worlds largest gathering of all the arts.

http://www.eif.co.uk/