This year’s Edinburgh International Festival opens with a large, free, public outdoor event which sees a spectacular digitally animated artwork projected onto the front of the Usher Hall, set to music.
The Harmonium Project, outside the Usher Hall celebrates Edinburgh’s relationship with architecture, learning, music and its role in developing technology. 59 Productions, which combines technology and art to amazing effect will create an event which celebrates 50 years of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, setting a recording of the Chorus, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and principal conductor Peter Oundjian performing John Adams’s Harmonium to stunning visuals projected onto the outside of the Hall.
The images are formed by data gathered at the University of Edinburgh as part of its research into wearable technologies and facial mapping as well as its work with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus on the physical impact of singing.
Over the last 50 years the Festival Chorus has demonstrated the levels of excellence that can be achieved by joining in a creative community. Each member enjoys singing as an amateur but the Chorus has been recognised by conductors from Herbert von Karajan to Donald Runnicles as one of the best in the world.
In its 50th anniversary season it sings major works by Brahms, Sibelius, Mozart, Berlioz, Beethoven and Adams with all of Scotland’s orchestras and principal conductors as well as the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Festival 2015 runs from Friday 7 August to Monday 31 August and welcomes over 2,300 artists from 39 nations to perform in Scotland’s magnificent capital city.