Gigs at Edinburgh International Festival: An overdue idea or opportunistic?

This article appears as part of the Herald Arts newsletter. As contemporary dancers twitch and jerk, opera singers warble, drag queens slay, stand-ups crack wise and jugglers crack knuckles, all eyes in the cultural world remain fixed on Edinburgh. Most of them, anyway.

But I end Week One and begin Week Two by dipping into a pool which for many years was not much fished by the Festival generally – and by the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) not at all. I mean popular music. Sure, the EIF famously hosted The Fall in 1988 for a now-legendary collaboration with Scottish dancer Michael Clark (it’s traditional to also add enfant terrible to his list of descriptors, so consider it done).

But it was only really under Fergus Linehan, Nicola Benedetti’s predecessor as EIF director, that we began seeing heavyweights from the world of rock, pop, jazz and world music arriving at venues such as the Playhouse, Queen’s Hall, Leith Theatre and (during the pandemic) a massive, chilly, open-sided tent at the Gyle. Read more: Herald Arts | Who took the Fringe more by storm, Liz Truss or her impersonator? The Gigs At EIF strand was 50% a good and overdue idea, and 50% an opportunistic trawl through a list of musicians touring within 500 miles of Edinburgh in August. No matter.

Ms Benedetti has continued the tradition and this year’s line-up includes Youssou N’Dour, Cat Power, Bat For Lashes and The Magnetic Fields. And so on Thursday night, as the rain and fog finally start to .