Live Music Now Scotland is delighted to launch another programme of afternoon concerts, to run during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world.
In an ongoing partnership with the National Museum of Scotland which began in 2005, the music outreach charity will be staging daily performances by musicians on its roster, featuring some of the best contemporary talents from Scotland and further afield.
Lively Scottish fiddle, accordion and pipes; Irish step dancing; Gaelic song; a string quartet that bridges that gap between classical and folk music; and musicians that draw influences from Europe, the Balkans and Greece are just some of the treats in store this summer. All the performances will be staged in the Museum’s impressive Grand Gallery, bringing the joy of live music to Edinburgh audiences every day – for free.
The theme for this year’s Free Fringe Music programme will be Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, tying in with the Museum’s major exhibition, “a compelling story of loyalty, loss, rebellion and retribution”.
The New York born violinist and human rights activist Yehudi Menuhin founded Live Music Now forty years ago, after seeing first-hand the uplifting and transformative effect that music can have in even the most traumatic of circumstances. During World War II Menuhin played violin for allied troops, accompanied by the composer Benjamin Britten on piano.
Keen to set up a project that would bring the experience of live music to those who rarely get an opportunity to hear or see any, Menuhin launched Live Music Now in the UK in 1977. The organisation now pays and trains professional musicians to work in the community, with branches around the world, including the Scottish branch which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2014.
Free Fringe Music at the National Museum of Scotland, 2pm daily, 5th-27th August.
Live Music Now Scotland are based in Edinburgh (LMN Scotland, 14 Lennox Street, Edinburgh, EH4 1QA), 0131 332 6356, scotland@livemusicnow.org
Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites is showing at the National Museum of Scotland until 12 November 2017.
