Keith Bruce
The launch of the Edinburgh International Festival had more than one new face on the platform on Wednesday morning. As well as the EIF's new director, Fergus Linehan, the somewhat abrupt departure from local politics of the familiar combative Steve Cardownie thrust Councillor Richard Lewis, Edinburgh's new Festival and Events Champion (as the post is somewhat cheesily styled) into the spotlight. Linehan had competition in the suave and smartly-suited stakes, but more significantly Lewis is a musician whose training began as a chorister at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, who could include his own personal reminiscence of participation in the Festival in his enthusiasm for his new role, for this year's programme and for the importance of Edinburgh's Festivals to the city.
His starring role was back in 1981, aged ten, when he was cast as Noah's son Ham (with Bill McCue playing Noah) in a production of Britten's Noye's Fludde at the Cathedral. Some years before Cllr Lewis's formative experience I made my own contribution to the Festival as a member of the Edinburgh Boy Singers, in a concert that paired Berlioz's Te Deum with Britten's The Building of the House at the Usher Hall on August 24, 1969.
For the specific details of that appearance - my memory is not that good - I am indebted to a new publication which appeared alongside the EIF programme on Wednesday. It is edited by music journalist David Kettle and celebrates 50 years of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, founded in 1965, in the last year of Lord Harewood's tenure as Festival Director, with Arthur Oldham as chorus master. I also learn that the concert in which I took part was the first one in which the choir traded under that name, having started out as the Scottish Festival Chorus, to perform the Scottish premiere of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. This was not an event to be celebrated in the Bruce household, because it meant that the choir my father sang with, and to which he remained fiercely loyal, the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union, lost their regular Festival gig, and the chance to work with superstar conductors and soloists. That change may well explain the initial absence of the word "Edinburgh" in the original name of the new chorus.
Half a century on, I think it is time to bury the hatchet. The Edinburgh Festival Chorus's 50th anniversary is indeed a cause for great celebration, and this year's free EIF opening event outside the Usher Hall on August 7 is a splendid way to do that. As Linehan points out in his foreword to the book, the Chorus in the only performing component of the EIF itself. Although the Festival has been engaged in outreach work in schools and the wider community throughout the year in recent times, the choir also has a unique position as the way that many non-professionals take part in the event each year. Read the book and learn from current chorus master Christopher Bell about the special character of an amateur chorus. Of course most of its members live locally, but it is also still the "Scottish" Festival Chorus in that one member, for example, travels from Inverness for Tuesday night rehearsals each week.
Councillor Lewis lamented that supporting the arts attracted few votes, but that would not affect his championing. I'm not convinced: he and I are far from the only people with a personal connection with the joy of making music at the Festival who take that very much into account when casting their ballot.
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