New Edinburgh festival director unveils full program with diverse celebrities

More than 2,300 artists from 39 nations are expected to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) in 2015, the festival organizer announced on Wednesday.

Unveiling his first program, Edinburgh International Festival new Irish director Fergus Linehan, who heads up the Sydney Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival among others, revealed big international stars across the performing arts disciplines, and new areas of programing for the international festival including more diverse genres of music and family-focused shows.

Running from August 7 to 31, this year's festival opens with a large, free, public outdoor event which projects digitally animated artwork onto the front of Usher Hall, set to music. The Harmonium Project, outside the Usher Hall, celebrates Edinburgh's relationship with architecture, learning, music and its role in developing technology.

Fifty-nine Productions, which is best known for designing the video for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, combines technology and art to create an event which celebrates 50 years of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, setting a recording of the chorus, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and principal conductor Peter Oundjian performing John Adams's Harmonium to visuals projected onto the outside of the hall.

Making their first appearances at the EIF this year are French actress, artist and dancer, Juliette Binoche, German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang, Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand and Sparks, and Chinese pianist Wang Yuja among others.

The performance line up also includes Tao Dance Theater from Beijing, and Dragon created by Scottish touring theatre company Vox Motus, the National Theater of Scotland and China's Tianjin People's Arts Theater.

Dragon was awarded Best Show for Children and Young People at the British Theater Awards, and the introduction of work conceived for young people into the main program including a family concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on August 30, looks to develop future audiences for the festival.

A fireworks concert is scheduled to bring the season to a close on August 31.

This year also marks the realignment of the EIF with the dates of the other August festivals in Edinburgh, including the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Art Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Linehan said, "I believe that being in Edinburgh in August opens your mind and makes you more ambitious, more thoughtful, more generous and more connected. Edinburgh in festival season has the power to leave you changed and changed for the better."

Fiona Hyslop, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, hailed the first festival program delivered under Linehan's leadership as "exciting and vibrant," as it offered huge potential to celebrate and promote Scotland's creative strengths to the world, she said.

Founded in 1947, and still one of the world's largest and most diversely curated festivals, as well as one of the most accessible. Enditem