Music, Contemporary, "Edinburgh"

The largest arts festival in the world and the greatest show on earth. Every year thousands of performers take to a multitude of stages all over Edinburgh to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and…

Bringing world-class arts to the capital since 1947, the EIF sets the standard for classical concerts, opera, dance and theatre, with performers drawn from around the world. Among this year's many highlights, curated on a theme of art and technology, are Scottish Ballet's Dance Odysseys, Beethoven's Fidelio rocketed into…

This festival within a festival celebrates the breadth of ballet from classic to contemporary. Featuring a diverse mixture of world premières, including work from Scottish Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre and Gelabert Azzopardi Companyia de Dansa. Part of Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Members of Ensemble musikFabrik talk to composer John Harris about their unique artistic vision.

Members of New York City’s Bang on a Can All-Stars discuss making music new with Edinburgh-based composer John Harris.

Meredith Monk explores the artist’s relationship with the environment, in conversation with Philip Campbell, editor of Nature magazine.

Philip Glass is joined by Patti Smith to discuss their cross-art form collaboration The Poet Speaks with writer and broadcaster Richard Coles.

Electronic music composer Marco Stroppa and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard talk to BBC Radio 3 presenter Tom Service about their pioneering work.

A concert of blazing energy, infectious rhythms and big sounds as Cologne-based contemporary music group Ensemble musikFabrik celebrates the sometimes outrageous music of US maverick Frank Zappa. Led from the drumkit by superstar percussionist Dirk Rothbrust, the ensemble explores connections between Zappa’s wild…

World Premiere: Cellist Peter Gregson’s new work To Dream Again unfolds after a series of interactions between the audience and bespoke data systems. Created especially for this world premiere, these audience interactions mean that each performance develops in an entirely different way in the laboratory venue and…

Ghosts of the past and present collide through video and sound technology in this evening-long project from the internationally renowned Brooklyn-based Bang on a Can All-Stars, an electric chamber ensemble that brings together some of the world’s most adventurous musical thinkers. The Field Recordings project looks back…

Artisan Trio present a series of concerts of music by contemporary composers who studied in Edinburgh but who now live, teach and work abroad. All the composers also choose a piece that they consider an inspiration and influence to their own work.

Down Under trio from Canberra bring their celebrated repertoire of original folk, country, jazz and blues-influenced music to the Fringe for the first time. www.cubbyhousestudio.com.au.

The 30-member amateur choir continues its nearly 20-year run as one of Scotland's best.

Cello star Matthew Barley presents a characteristically immersive musical experience: Benjamin Britten's Third Cello Suite and solo cello works by Tavener, Dai Fujikura, James MacMillan and Jan Bang, with specially commissioned animated visuals from Yeast Culture.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has been one of the mainstays of Scotland's musical life since its foundation in 1891, with an education and outreach programme that's second to none.

Kaija Saariaho is one of the great composers of our time, and this concert features the UK premiere of her Circle Map. Jack Liebeck is the soloist in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 1, and the last item on the bill is Ravel's celebrated orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Susanna Mälkki conducts.

Dvořák's Symphony No 9 (From the New World) was one of the first pieces of classical music to incorporate melodies from the African American tradition. Here it follows Dispersal by the gifted Australian composer Brett Dean and Britten's Violin Concerto featuring the still-young but already highly experienced Norwegian…

Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie is one of the most popular pieces of post-WWII classical music, and with good reason. It's a whole recital in itself, mixing dissonant panic with lush romance, and jazzy fanfares with what was, in the late 1940s, the very latest thing in electronic music in the form of the ondes…

Master percussionist Colin Currie is the featured soloist in James MacMillan's exuberant concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel; before that, there's Vaughan Williams' eerie Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and afterwards, Sibelius' bracing Symphony No 6 and The Swan of Tuonela. Rosie Staniforth (cor anglais) is also featured.

Valentyn Sylvestrov's The Messenger is a memorial for the composer's late wife, whereas much of Mozart's Mass in C Minor was written as a showpiece for Mozart's fiancee, Constanze Weber, who sang it in the original performance (by which time she was his wife). In between, there's Mozart's Symphony No 40. Guest soloists…

Scotland consists of so many islands that the sea is an inescapable part of life. With the exception of Kodály's Dances of Galánta, this concert consists of works with a seaborne flavour: Sibelius' incidental music for Materlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande contains a section set at the seashore; Kevin Volans' Symphony: Daar…

Oliver Knussen conducts the world premiere of a new work by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as well as Bartok's uncharacteristically sunny Piano Concerto No 3 featuring Peter Serkin and Stravinsky's neoclassical Symphony in C.

Selections from Dvořák's two sets of Slavonic Dances frame Ligeti's Violin Concerto, featuring the great Tasmin Little as soloist, and Haydn's Symphony No 31 'Horn Signal'. Robin Ticciati conducts.