This year’s Edinburgh International Festival will present its largest-ever programme of American artists, exploring both the creativity and the cruelty of the United States, according to director Nicola Benedetti. The festival, which runs in August, commemorates the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence under the theme 'All Rise'.
Benedetti, the Grammy-winning violinist now in her fourth year as director, said Donald Trump’s second term made it 'ideal, urgent, necessary' to showcase American art that exposes hypocrisy and prejudice alongside innovation and energy. The festival includes a world-first collaboration between pianist Yuja Wang and Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet’s first Edinburgh show in 20 years, and the final performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
Other highlights include theatre pieces on the Aids crisis and racist lynchings, and 'Clown Show', described as a contemporary portrait of America as a falling-apart circus. The festival also features the UK premiere of Zürich Opera House’s updated 'A Masked Ball' set in Boston’s Gilded Age, and a world premiere from Scottish Opera investigating the opioid crisis.
Marsalis, who steps down as JLCO director in 2027, said the current US crises are part of a global 'power struggle' between ethics and domination. 'It does not matter to me about how unethical any given American administration may be at a time, because there have been other unethical ones,' he said.
The programme includes the first overseas exhibition by Alabama’s Legacy Museum on transatlantic slavery, and a Swiss-Catalan-Mexican production honouring the enslaved. Canadian contributions feature Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 'The Song of Hiawatha' performed in full for the first time at the festival.
