What are the artists taking part in this year’s International Festival looking forward to the most? In the lead up to opening night, we've invited a number of performers to tell us what’s on their must-see list.

Here are Aidan O'Rourke's Festival highlights:

1. Hindu Times

Jaimini Jethwa is edgy, hilarious, gritty. A few years ago she performed an excerpt from her one woman play The Last Queen of Scotland at a Lau-Land event and she was knock-out! Bold, haunting, totally Dundonian. This new show looks equally uproarious.

2. Tune-Yards

Irresistible pop with a social conscious and post-punk electronic chutzpah. Meryl’s got serious style.

3. Lament For Sheku Bayoh

A tribute to a lost life with resonances with my own International Festival series, A Great Disordered Heart, that looks at community, identity and belonging here in Scotland.

4. Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Fazil Say

I love, love, love the knife-edge daring and full-body conviction Patricia brings to whatever she plays. She’s a reminder that what we do as musicians is dead if we play it safe, if we don’t risk every ounce of ourselves.

5. The Comet is Coming

This band sounds like nobody else – twisting jazz into something deftly and ferociously new. I’ve seen their sound described as 'the music of the future, but backwards’. I get that!

Aidan O’Rourke has curated A Great Disordered Heart, a series of three concerts and a film exploring the past and present of his home in the heart of Edinburgh’s Little Ireland, for this year’s International Festival.