THE Edinburgh International Festival will have a particular focus on its audience in the next five years, but new director Nicola Benedetti is planning no great change in the structure of the event.
In her first interviews since being appointed as successor to Fergus Linehan, the virtuoso violinist outlined a vision for the Festival that maintains an international perspective alongside a commitment to promote Scotland to the world, but is primarily concerned with having the broadest possible appeal.
Ms Benedetti, who is both the first woman and the first Scot to be appointed as artistic director of the Festival, will continue her playing career alongside her new job but foresees a “streamlining” of her concert commitments, while the education work of the Benedetti Foundation she established will require her presence on only four occasions each year.
Speaking at the end of her first week at EIF headquarters in The Hub, Ms Benedetti said: “From the time people see a poster and buy a ticket to the moment a performance starts, my focus will be on creating a sense of warmth and welcoming, disarming any prejudice and uncertainty about whether people are meant to be there.
“And once the gig starts, once the art begins, there should be an intensity of experience there.
"I want to create a narrative that speaks to people on a fundamental level and draws people in to storytelling in all the art forms. And part of that is in bringing Scotland’s stories to the world.”
She added, however, that it was essential to maintain the global content of the programme, in a way that takes account of the environmental agenda, continuing Linehan’s recent commitment to longer residencies for performers in the capital.
“We are an international festival and we have to have an international programme.
"That is the way to disarm prejudice and excite nuance and curiosity in all the audience members, to question our own perspectives and know the viewpoint of others.
"The Festival is one of the prime places where these discussions should be happening,” she said.
“The success of Fergus’s time is an incredible thing to celebrate.
"If you are inviting an orchestra or theatre group from elsewhere in the world, for reasons of sustainability and also for the depth of experience we offer, we need to give them the chance to put themselves forward to our audience and give the audience the chance to learn why we have chosen them, and why money has been spent on bringing them here.”
In that choice of artists to programme, Ms Benedetti expressed full confidence in the team she has inherited at EIF.
“The amount of experience and expertise in this building is phenomenal. It is a pleasure for me to work alongside people with so much pride and commitment to this organisation, with a lot of diverse viewpoints and complementary working.
“I won’t be doing away with any big chunk of the Festival. I don’t think there will be anything too shocking there.”
In particular she was clear that the free events Linehan introduced chimed with her own ethos, with the range of approaches to the Festival’s opening event giving her plenty of scope for the shape they may have in the future.
“People are intensely curious and we don’t always do enough to help people find their way into the arts.”
That has been Ms Benedetti’s mission in her music education work and she is happy that it can continue without her own constant presence.
“I will continue to do the four large-scale workshops for the Foundation per year, but next year it will reach 22,000 primary school pupils and those residency programmes exist without my physical presence.
“That is a source of unbelievable pride for me because it was always set up to do this. I have a set of extremely clear, strong principles that I believe about music education, and people now teach them and galvanise groups in music-making.”
On the concert platform, the reduction in her workload will be a more phased process. With new violin concertos written for her by Wynton Marsalis, Mark Simpson and Sir James MacMillan, she has commitments to perform them over the years ahead.
“It is a huge privilege and responsibility to be performing those pieces and it is going to be a period of intense workload, but I’m not used to much else!
“This year was set in stone before I knew I was going to take on the Festival role, but I have been touring for 20 years now, with about 110 concerts in a year, so it is fine for me at this point to be streamlining what I choose to do.”
What the Festival undoubtedly gains by Nicola Benedetti’s appointment is a popular personality as a figurehead, whose voice is sure to be an important asset in difficult times.
“The EIF is not immune to the pressures and struggles that all cultural organisations are facing,” she said.
“It is a time for bold and imaginative thinking, but also a time for cultural organisations to state their necessity. We need to be central to the health and well-being of the nation.
“In Scotland, when you are speaking to mainstream political figures, and to many people in the business community, you are not going through an endless justification and clarification process.
"People in this country, better than some other places in the world, understand the need for the Festival to continue to exist.
“It doesn’t mean you are not operating within a budget or can take unnecessary risks, but the Festival’s reason for being is accepted.
"Boldness is needed in accepting that responsibility.”
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