Music

One of the less visible activities of the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is its its year-round programme of education and outreach. Around 1,000 young people are participating in workshops and projects this year, that explore the cultural diversity of performers and the ideas raised in the Edinburgh's flagship arts festival.

The 2010 Edinburgh International Festival Fireworks Concert will this year celebrate "Music from the Movies", it was announced by Festival Director Jonathan Mills this morning at the launch of the EIF programme taking place in August and early September.

 There’s always that fear when there’s only one piece on the programme, and so no interval, that you are in for a long slog. But far from it with Stéphane Denève’s interpretation of Mahler’s full and complex 6th Symphony. 

Northern Ballet Theatre's reputation has grown immeasurably since David Nixon took over as Artistic Director in 2001. Since then he has created and choreographed nine full-length ballets for the company and in December last year won an OBE for services to dance. 

Annual festival of traditional music taking place at venues across the city. In 2010, the festival introduced a street fare.

Dear God, I hate myself. So wails Jamie Stewart as he stands wracked, seemingly almost in pain, at the microphone. His eyes are permanently screwed shut as he wrestles with technology to expose whatever demons lie rank within him.

Richard Egarr, Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, was the guest conductor of this performance of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven compositions played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. 

Songs For An Airless Room styles itself as somewhere between theatre and a piece of music to be performed. If this is fairly grandiose and self-regarding it nevertheless is an ambitious collaboration between live musical performance and screened film.

Po Na Nas last week gathered a few known names on the Edinburgh music scene for a Battle of the Bands, where the winner of the event will play at a new Indie night, ‘Edit’, when it moves to the Liquid Room on Sundays.

As a child I don’t suppose I was alone in pondering heaven and hell and wondering how it was decided which I should end up in at my death. John Henry Newman’s long poem, The Dream of Gerontius, is a dream just about that.

Thank goodness nobody has fiddled with the wonderful acoustics of the Usher Hall during its recent upgrading. It remains one of the great concert halls and fittingly so for a city so highly regarded around the world for its festivals, of which classical music forms an enormously important part. There are still 2,200 seats and if standing is also allowed as many as 2,900 can be in the auditorium.

Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow brought warmth, enthusiasm and clarity to a recital designed to give further recognition of the work of Hans Gál. Turnabout they introduced each piece with fascinating details that even the specialist audience may not have known. Nor, but not quite turnabout, were they working the same end of the Yamaha’s keyboard for each piece.

After the setbacks and the multi-million pound cost over-runs, the new wing at the Usher Hall is ready to be unveiled to the world. From tomorrow people will be able to explore the much-awaited new addition to the grade A-listed building, which completes the £25 million, second phase of refurbishment of the Lothian Road concert hall.

The Edinburgh International Harp Festival (EIHF) proudly unveils the harping gems for its 2010 festival at the Merchiston Castle Campus in Edinburgh.

Blood and guts are on the menu at the Edinburgh International Science Festival in April. The annual festival of popular science, which aims to educate through hands-on activities and topical talks, has a new floor at one of its main venues, the City Art Centre, devoted to the human body.

English folk musician Kate Rusby, who won a Mercury prize nomination with her 1999 album Sleepless, headlines the eighth Ceilidh Culture, Edinburgh's festival of traditional music and culture, which runs 26 March to 18 April. Rusby, reckoned to be one of the most talented contemporary folkies around, plays at the recently re-opened Usher Hall (18 April).

The annual Edinburgh Jazz and Blues festival runs the gamut of jazz persuasions from more traditional Dixie and ragtime bands to up-and-coming stars, from big band concerts to pub jams. It comes a month after the Edinburgh International Film Festival and gets the August Festivals season going.

The Edinburgh International Festival may have come first, but generally it's the Fringe that Edinburgh is best-known for. There's really nothing quite like it: "the largest show on Earth" they say. The latest stats seem to bear that out: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009 saw 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows at 265 venues. It's a sprawling, anarchic, sleepless month of live performances.

Berlioz has a reputation for grandiose pieces, involving a multitude of musicians, but L’Enfance du Christ is different.  Written in 1853/54 for a chamber orchestra and small chorus it is an expose of exquisite musical minimalism. 

The U.K. premiere of Michael Daugherty’s Deus ex Machina was cannily placed between two firm favourites, Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5. Previously unheard music is not a crowd-puller. But Daugherty is a well respected American composer, describing himself as originally a lounge bar pianist, who was born in 1954.