THE director of the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), Fergus Linehan, has extended his contract to lead the festival until 2022.
Mr Linehan presented his first Edinburgh International Festival programme in August 2015, and was originally appointed to lead the organisation for five festivals, until 2019.
He will now be in charge of a further three festivals, until September 2022.
Under his charge the EIF has widened its musical performances to include rock, pop and cabaret, and each of his three festivals have featured free opening events, utilising light and music at the Usher Hall, the Castle Rock and, this year, St Andrew Square.
He said: "I am very grateful to the Board of the Edinburgh International Festival for giving me the opportunity to lead this extraordinary institution for a further three years.
"The commitment and creativity of the Festival team has made the past three years the most professionally exhilarating period of my career.
"We have tried, over this time, to broaden the Festival’s appeal while safeguarding our commitment to quality and virtuosity.
"Over the next 5 years we look forward to developing new initiatives that will support the continued growth and development of this remarkable event.
"I would like to thank our stakeholders, donors, fellow festivals and, most particularly, the people of Edinburgh for their ongoing support and enthusiasm."
Niall Lothian, chairman of the Festival’s Board of Trustees said: "We’re delighted that Fergus has accepted the Board’s invitation to extend his contract as Festival Director to 2022.
"His first three Festivals revealed his in-depth knowledge of all cultural genres and his extensive contact book of artists and performers. Future Festivals will, I’m sure, continue to reveal his creativity and innovation."
The 2018 Edinburgh International Festival will run from August 3 to 27.
The programme will be revealed next March.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here