Comedy, culture and spectacle will be across Edinburgh festivals programming and events from BBC Scotland.
A new BBC festival venue at Dynamic Earth, will, from the 7-20th August, play host to 14 days-worth of broadcasts in front of live audiences. Among the other highlights is Edinburgh International Festival Director Nicola Benedetti presenting a concert with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with its Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth at the Usher Hall this evening (August 6.)
On the BBC Scotland channel, there will be a new run of the Edinburgh Unlocked series with comedian Mark Nelson, while Damian Barr will host a special edition of The Big Scottish Book Club with some of the biggest literary award winners appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
BBC Scotland will also have a new documentary Kyle Falconer: Love & Chaos, focusing on the Scots rocker, frontman of chart-topping band, The View, as he and fiancé Laura Wilde prepare to take their semi-autobiographical show No Love Songs – an intimate and emotional portrait of their eight years together – to the Fringe.
New arts strand The Culture Scene will have three new podcast/ iPlayer films featuring artists from the Fringe. The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo highlights will be shown towards the end of August, with a further extensive range of special Edinburgh festival programming on BBC Radio Scotland, spanning entertainment and arts. As well as dedicated programming there will be festival reports across tv, radio and online news, with special reports from BBC Scotland’s Arts Correspondent Pauline McLean.
The new Dynamic Earth BBC venue will this year host Edinburgh specials of a wide range of BBC Radio Scotland programming including:
- The Afternoon Showwith presenters Janice Forsyth, Michelle McManus and Nicola Meighan
- The Quay Sessionswith Roddy Hart
- Breaking the Newswith Des Clarke
- Off the Ballwith Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan
- Take the Floorwith Gary Innes
- Travelling Folkwith Anna Massie
- Out of Doorswith Mark Stephen and Rachel Stewart
- For the Recordwith Nicola Meighan
- Vic Galloway Live at the Edinburgh Festival
- In Conversation with Vic Galloway
- BBC Scotland Introducingwith Phoebe I-H and Shereen Cutkelvin
- Morningswith Stephen Jardine
- Sunday Morningwith Sally Magnusson
- BBC Upload Showcasewith Anna Welander
The network radio shows at the BBC venue at Dynamic Earth include Radio 4’s Just a Minute with Sue Perkins, Loose Ends with Clive Anderson, Who Runs the World? with Catherine Bohart, Front Row, United Nations of News and Fresh from the Fringe, BBC Three Counties Radio’s Anything but Coldplay, Radio 3’s In Tune, and Radio Five Live’s Nihal Arthanayake, Gordon Smart, and Elis James and John Robins shows, and BBC disability and mental health podcast Access All.
Louise Thornton, Head of Commissioning:
“BBC Scotland is going to be very much there at the Edinburgh Festivals with our own venue at Dynamic Earth, with a packed and diverse showcase of programmes from BBC Radio Scotland and elsewhere in the BBC. And also with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Usher Hall working in tandem with the International Festival Director herself, Nicola Benedetti.
“There will also be more programming reflecting events from across the festivals, from Summerhall to Edinburgh Castle, conveying the excitement and dynamism of the festivals, in the company of some of the biggest names in acting, music, writing and culture as well as some key up-and-coming talent.”
Among the top names who will feature on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio Scotland output are
- Marcus Brigstocke, Susie McCabe, Celya AB, Connor Burns, Val McDermid and Stuart Mitchell on Breaking the Newsand Frank Skinner and Jamie MacDonald on Edinburgh Unlocked
- Scotland’s favourite sports mum Judy Murray and international authors double-Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead and the youngest ever writer to win the Booker prize Eleanor Catton on The Big Scottish Book Club
- Kate Nash, Andrew O’Hagan, Jason Byrne, Fiona Allen and Cora Bissett on The Afternoon Show
- Author Denise Mina on For the Recordsharing the soundtrack of her life with Nicola Meighan
- Tom Robinson and Richard Jobson on Vic Galloway In Conversation
- Rising star Luke La Volpe and country-pop singer-songwriter Rianne Downey, fresh from her TRNSMT performance alongside Paul Heaton, are among the acts to be featured on The Quay Sessions.
- And up and coming artists Fourth Daughter, Happy Daze and Psweatpants on BBC Introducing Scotland
New arts strand The Culture Scene includes a weekly podcast presented by Nicola Meighan and a series of short films highlighting the work and life experiences of contemporary artists with the pieces showcased as audio on Radio Scotland’s The Afternoon Show/BBC Sounds and visually on BBC iPlayer.
There will be three new pieces inspired by artists appearing in Edinburgh, including Prime, Dancebase’s company of elder dancers aged 60-84 who have worked with Taiwanese choreographer Ming-Hsuan Liu to create The Infinite Life Journey, to challenge perceptions around ageing and dance. And Concerned Others, a puppetry performance looking at drug deaths in Scotland, using real life testimonies of people impacted by drug deaths from across the whole of Scotland, which is at Summerhall., with a further piece to be announced in due course.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will give two performances at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall as part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. On Sunday 6 August, the BBC SSO and its Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth are joined by Scotland’s favourite violinist and Festival Director Nicola Benedetti, who alongside Radio 3 presenter Tom Service, presents a concert titled ‘Where do we go from here?’, exploring orchestral works by today’s most exciting composers including Hans Abrahamsen and Helen Grime.
The BBC SSO returns for the festival’s Closing Concert on Sunday 27 August with American conductor Karina Canellakis, and is joined onstage by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and three vocal soloists for Rachmaninov’s monumental ‘Choral’ Symphony, The Bells, with both concerts to be broadcast on Radio 3 at a later date.
