ONe of Scotland's most acclaimed living composers, Sir James MacMillan, is to be celebrated by the Edinburgh International Festival its 2019 season.
The festival will stage a special series of five concerts celebrating the life and work of Sir James MacMillan in his 60th birthday year.
It will culminate in the world premiere of his Symphony No.5 'Le grand inconnu' on 17 August in the Usher Hall, when the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The Sixteen and Genesis Sixteen will perform the new work.
The concerts include the organ concerto A Scotch Bestiary, concerto for orchestra Woman of the Apocalypse, chamber work Fourteen Little Pictures, Symphony No 2 conducted by MacMillan himself, and his recent oratorio, All the Hills and Vales Along.
Fergus Linehan, director of the festival, said: "I think he's a complex but amazing man.
"He is so of Scotland, in a way that shows the complexity of Scotland.
"There are so many forces within any country: and here you have someone who came from a working class background, who learned music through the Scottish brass band tradition, and through the Church, and but then didn't go off to the Sorbonne and wistfully think about Scotland - he actually stayed in Scotland and continued to write for his local choir, and is deeply religious.
"He built this body of work, based upon those cultural and socio-political ideas and then the music of the country."
He added: "He gets put in this category of 'new music' because of course it is new music.
"But his actually following is probably choirs up and down the country, he exists in a completely different ambit.
"He is an enormously important international artist, and Scotland happens to not only be lay claim to him, but he is absolutely of this place.
"I find his music really very moving, it has enormous integrity to it, he responds to things very passionately."
Of the new symphony, he said: "It is a choral work, a substantial work."
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