Our first playlist showcases the wide scope of the music programme at the International Festival this year: from Anna Meredith's gargantuan Nautilius you'll hear in at one of Light on the Shore with Edinburgh Gin Seaside concert this summer, to Rossini's famous The Barber of Seville overture, to Debussy's La mer, which you can hear in our 2018 trailer and which will be performed by the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland in August.
Celebrating the hugely talented young musicians we're welcoming from all over the world this Festival, including The Orchestra of the Americas, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Colburn School Orchestra, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of the USA and our own National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and National Youth Choir of Scotland.
Get acquainted with the the dazzling array of virtuoso pianists that will grace the stages of the International Festival this August. We've got Krystian Zimerman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Gabriela Montero performing concertos with some of the world's greatest orchestras and the likes of Piotr Anderszewski, Robert Levin and Ronald Brautigam giving concert recitals, plus a residency from Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
We asked our followers to name their top St. Vincent songs and they delivered. This week's playlist features something for every mood, from the mock-jauntiness of her hit single "Pills" to the emotive melancholy in "Smoking Section" and the dream-like daze of "Huey Newton".
To mark Record Store Day, we curated a playlist of Festival artists with vinyl releases, including St. Vincent, John Grant and King Creosote. Mogwai's 1997 compilation of singles and B-sides ten rapid, Django Django's EP In Your Beat, The Vaselines' first ever full-length album Dum Dum and Karine Polwart's A Pocket of Wind Resistance (with Pippa Murphy).
Our sixth playlist shines a light on our dance and theatre programmes. Schubert, Ravel, Gorecki, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, and Nina Simone all provide part of the soundtrack in Cold Blood's dance for hands, while the family show Hocus Pocus is set to a musical score based around Grieg’s evocative Peer Gynt suites. Vincenzo Lamagna's score will be played live in Akram Khan's XENOS, while Autobiography features an original composition by Jlin and the theatre piece HOME is accompanied live by the poetic folk/Americana songwriter Elvis Perkins,
Tune in to our extended Light on the Shore with Edinburgh Gin Seaside playlist to join us a journey through the highways, byways and back lanes of Scottish music. From punk to post-punk, from new wave to no wave, from alt folk to pop folk, from ambient electronica to techno this truly eclectic season at Leith Theatre is driven by some of Scotland’s most innovative artists, curators and promoters.
This week our playlist turns to our artist-in-residence, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose dexterity on the piano has secured his reputation as a leading performer both of contemporary music and of classical masters like Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. A five-time Grammy Award-nominee, he was last nominated for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Bartók's "Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion", which he performed with fellow pianist (and wife) Tamara Stefanovich.
Our new John Grant playlist spans everything from the folky crooners of his debut solo album Queen of Denmark to the electro-pop/rock blends of his collaboration with Biggi Veira from the Icelandic electronica outfit GusGus, even including a hark back to his original stint in the spotlight as front-man of the indie-rock band The Czars. All are united by Grant's frank, often playful, but also deeply emotive and confessional lyrics.
This year's Hidden Door line-up features some stellar artists who also appear as part of our own Light on the Shore with Edinburgh Gin Seaside programme, including Free Love (formerly known as Happy Meals), C Duncan, and Honeyblood - who will appear with The Jesus and Mary Chain and Spinning Coin at the Hidden Door gig at the International Festival this August.
Meet the astounding singers in our jazz and classical music programme whose voices will fill Edinburgh's theatres and concert halls this August. Featuring Ilker Arcayürek, Dorothea Roschmann, J’Nai Bridges, Alice Coote, Louise Alder, Dianne Reeves, Michele Losier, Pavel Cernoch, Karen Cargill and Christopher Maltman.
From folk-infused classical music to avant-garde Egyptian electronica, sample the folk and Celtic music throughout this year's programme. Our playlist features songs from Gaelic superstar Julie Fowlis, British band Lau and beloved singer-songwriter King Creosote, as well as folk-infused classical music pieces from the likes of Bartók and Dvořák.
Our opera programme this August features some real orchestral treats. Audiences can look forward to the renowned director Stefan Herheim's interpretation of Rossini's Cinderella, La Cenerentola, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord's take on the jukebox musical The Beggar's Opera, a concert performance of Wagner's Siegfried and of Englebert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, and a sleek-looking production of The Barber of Seville.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra plays all four of Brahms' symphonies across two concerts at the Usher Hall this Festival. Get ready for incredibly emotional performances, as they conclude Robin Ticciati's journey with the Orchestra as its Principal Conductor. Earlier this year, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Robin Ticciati released a recording of Brahms' symphonies, which got fantastic reviews.
Some of the incredibly talented string players from our 2018 programme play first fiddle in our new playlist. Scottish violin superstar Nicola Benedetti opens The Queen's Hall concert series before joining the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the celebrations of Bernstein's birth centenary. This year's line-up also includes violinists Viktoria Mullova, James Ehnes and Simone Porter; cellists Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Jean-Guihen Queryas, violist Eivind Ringstad and string ensembles including the Dover Quartet and Pavel Haas Quartet.
This week, we’ve been chatting to our colleagues in the International Festival office about the music they can’t wait to hear this August - be it an operatic aria, a score to a dance show, or an alt-rock ballad. We ended up with such a big playlist, we broke it down in two: one featuring classical repertoire, and the other contemporary tunes.
100 years after the widely celebrated composer's birth, we celebrate the music and lasting influence of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein made it his life's work to impart his love of music to his listeners. Over more than a decade, he led a televised series of Young People's Concerts during his time as the New York Philharmonic's conductor. He is still remembered today for the infectious way that he communicated classical music's themes and styles. Through hit musicals like West Side Story and On the Town, he succeeded in combining classical and contemporary techniques so that his music appealed both to opera and musical theatre audiences.
It's time for our playlist of people's picks, where we share songs from the International Festival programme that have been recommended by you, our audience. And it's quite the eclectic mix, ranging from the choral, with the National Youth Choir of Scotland featuring "Five Spirituals" from A Child of Our Time, to the new pioneering pop of electronic producer SOPHIE, who appears a special club night curated by Numbers. Thanks to all of you who sent us your top songs - one thing's for sure, this is going to be a great August brimming with fantastic and thought-provoking music.
Photo: 2018 staff playlist picks
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