Artists have the power to stand up for truth, says Edinburgh festival director

The Guardian

13-03-2025

Musicians and artists should challenge disinformation and cynicism in global politics by standing up for fundamental truths, the violinist Nicola Benedetti has said.
Benedetti, the director of the Edinburgh international festival, said the arts played an essential role during periods of turmoil by showing the best of human achievement.
'We're currently caught in a bewildering swirl of truth and alternative fact and manipulated language disguised as information,' she said, as she announced this year's programme, the theme of which is 'the truth we seek'.
Speaking after the launch, Benedetti acknowledged she was referring to the crises that have erupted since Donald Trump resumed the US presidency. 'There's no point downplaying the presence of the United States [here]. Everyone is watching and there are huge tectonic shifts and enormous questions facing leadership and political leadership at the moment,' she said.
'But we have an advantage with the arts in that we can speak that language of allegory. We can speak to both pertinent and timeless issues at once, [so] now is the time to double down on exactly that.'
The opening event features a marathon eight-hour performance at the Usher Hall of Sir John Tavener's religious song cycle The Veil of the Temple, which Benedetti said spoke to the role religious belief played in illuminating universal truths.
Being staged for the first time in the UK in 20 years, it features 250 singers from several companies singing about the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist faiths in five languages, including Aramaic and Church Slavonic.
The following day the Usher Hall will host 120 teenage musicians from the NYO2 youth orchestra based at Carnegie Hall in New York, who start a three-year festival residency this year, as well as 20 young Scottish musicians. They will collaborate in a family concert that afternoon, followed by a performance of Prokofiev's fifth symphony.
Benedetti said grand scale and mass participation were central to the festival's ethos. In another event, chamber musicians with the Aga Khan music programme would jam on the spot, with audience members able to request pieces of music.
She said: 'We are committed to infusing a relatable, casual, open and trusting vibe into everything we do, in spirit and in action.' That would include again selling about 50,000 tickets for £30 or less, alongside £10 offers and half-price tickets for teenagers.
Other notable events, she said, included the premiere of a new play starring the Succession actor Brian Cox, satirising the Scottish banker Fred Goodwin and his role in the 2008 financial crisis, with Cox playing the ghost of the economist Adam Smith.
There is also a new Scottish Ballet production on the feud between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, featuring punk couture costumes, stilts and a male dancer playing Mary; an Australian production of the opera Orpheus and Eurydice, featuring a contemporary circus company and video projections; and the premiere of a hip-hop interpretation of JS Bach's work featuring dancers from Acland Burghley school in north London and 18th-century period instruments.
This year's festival would be smaller than previous years, Benedetti said, because of funding cuts, with contemporary music and opera pared back.
Speaking in January, Benedetti expressed alarm about the threat to Scottish arts from cuts in government and philanthropic funding. But she said a subsequent award to the festival of £11.75m over the next three years, part of a £200m nationwide funding package from Creative Scotland, was 'pivotal'.
She said she hoped three-year funding pledges would be honoured. 'You have to proceed with a level of confidence and plan ambitiously, but you also hope for a level of non-partisan integrity around promises made,' she said.
The Edinburgh international festival runs from 1 to 25 August and tickets go on general sale on 27 March via eif.co.uk.
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Nederlands Dans Theater explores humanity's destructive impact on the world through soundscapes, dialogue and dance.
Make it happen
Brian Cox plays the ghost of Adam Smith in a satire about Royal Bank of Scotland's role in the 2008 banking crisis, in a show by National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep.
The Veil of the Temple
Sir John Tavener's eight-hour choral work involves 250 singers and features the Monteverdi choir, the National Youth Orchestra and Edinburgh Festival Chorus.
Mary Queen of Scots
This Scottish Ballet premiere from the choreographer Sophie Laplane fuses a punk aesthetic with renaissance power politics in a story about the conflict between Mary and Queen Elizabeth I.
Orpheus and Eurydice
Australian opera companies along with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the modern circus company Circa present an acrobatic 'ancient tale of love, lust and loss'.