THE Edinburgh International Festival must live up to its title by broadening its global reach to an "ever-changing world", director Jonathan Mills has said.
The EIF needs s to engage with South America as much as North America, in northern and southern Africa, in Europe and in Asia, he said.
Mr Mills was speaking in Singapore at the weekend at the launch of a showcase of the Asian island nation to
be staged across the Edinburgh festivals this summer.
He said the Festival will never be determined on a global quota system, but dropped heavy hints that he will be looking beyond Europe to Asia and other regions that have not played a big role in the traditional line-up.
Mr Mills said a festival founded to lighten the gloom of postwar Europe had a duty to range wider to the rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India or China, using new themes to push geographic boundaries. The Festival "must earn its own title, it must earn its origins", he said. "We should not rest on our laurels. The Festival takes seriously its place in Europe, but I believe it needs to take equally seriously its place in the world.
"I believe the EIF in the future is a festival that is engaged in Europe as much as it is in Asia, as much in central and South America as it is in North America, as much in north Africa as in sub-Saharan Africa."
Diaspora, at the EIF, is the flagship of the Singaporean showcase. It involves the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, with 52 musicians on traditional instruments, performing against a backdrop of four giant screens, and six Asian video artists telling stories of journeys exploring their family roots.
Mr Mills, an Australian composer and former director of the Melbourne Festival, has worked closely with Singapore in the past.
His work, Sandakan Threnody, written about his father's experience in Japanese prisoner of war camps, was first staged by Theatre Works Singapore, which is producing Diaspora in Edinburgh. One leading figure on the Scottish music scene, who asked not to be named, said Edinburgh had been a Euro-centric festival. While acts have come from all over the world, big Western symphony orchestras or operas formed the backbone of its music programme.
"Jonathan comes from another part of the world, and traditional barriers between western and non-western cultures are becoming more fluid," he said. But while Mr Mills' "new dimension" is welcomed, there is concern in Scottish classical music circles that the Festival's mainstream orchestral and opera line-up is not as strong as it ought to be, sources say.
In 2008, Mr Mills' festival theme of "Artists Without Borders" brought major shows from European countries. In the Year of Homecoming 2009, this year's theme is the Enlightenment.
The Singaporean showcase at the festivals this year ranges from the country's top jazz pianist appearing at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival to a fusion band interweaving Chinese and Indian sounds at the Edinburgh Mela.
Lee Suan Hiang, of the National Arts Council of Singapore, said the EIF was "one of the oldest, most successful, most established festivals in the world. You know when you get there, there's a certain buzz. Hopefully it will strike a chord with the international audience and raise the profile of Singaporean arts".
The EIF celebrated a season of Indian music as far back as 1963, with Asian performance from Japanese plays to the Chinese guqin player Li Xiangting.
"If I look at my bookshelf in Edinburgh, there is no culture that has not been represented in Edinburgh," Mr Mills said. But he added it was "an argument about proportion, not neglect".
The full article contains 622 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
