67th Edinburgh International Festival Opens with Tech and Art Themes Today

As major productions by artists from countries from France to America, and Scotland to Korea get set to open this weekend across Edinburgh's major theatres and concert halls, audiences from around 70 nations are expected to join in Scotland's capital to enjoy, what remains, one of the world's greatest arts Festivals.

The Usher Hall is the focus of the Festival's opening night this Friday with art filling not only the inside of the concert hall but also the plaza outside. Jonathan Mills joins Korean artist Hyung Su Kim to flick the switch on a major outdoor media installation Media Skins at 6.30pm, allowing audiences arriving for the Opening Concert to be among the first to experience this unique addition to the Festival.

Using visuals captured through satellites Arirang 2 and 3 from the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, images of Edinburgh, North Korea, South Korea, San Francisco, the Nile, the Amazon, Dubai, New York, Sydney, Rome, London, Shanghai, New Delhi and Paris and crater images from around the world Hyung Su Kim creates a stunning kaleidoscopic film.

An original soundtrack based on The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond and the traditional Korean song Arirang combine to accompany the images.

Media Skins runs outside the Usher Hall throughout the Festival from morning till late at night. There is a second Skin at the Festival Theatre which will be switched on at 7.30pm on Friday 9 August to coincide with the Opening Concert across town.

This year's celebrated Opening Concert at 7.30pm at the Usher Hall is Prokofiev's rousing film score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. An all star Russian line up join with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus to open the Festival to a packed hall. The Festival's Honorary President Valery Gergiev conducts the home talents alongside glittering mezzo soprano Yulia Matochkina and the trail blazing young pianist Daniil Trifonov whose debut raised Festival audiences to their feet in a standing ovation last year.

Edinburgh International Festival Director, Jonathan Mills said 'After all the months and years of planning and hard work by all the Festival staff, it is fantastically exciting to be opening Edinburgh International Festival 2013. Adding to the splash of the Opening Concert will be Hyung Su Kim's large scale, stunning LED artwork taking over the plaza outside the Usher Hall which passers by can enjoy for free throughout the Festival. Our Scottish and Russian line up for the Opening Concert promises a terrific evening of rousing music to launch the diverse and exciting line up of artists we have scheduled to entertain and engage Festival audiences from Edinburgh and around the world over the next three weeks.'

The Opening Concert is sold out with return tickets only available, also sold out at the Usher Hall are concerts by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Faure's Requiem and Verdi's Requiem. All tickets to Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Marco Stroppa's concerts at The Hub and Christophe Rousset's performance tour of the rare instrument collection at St Cecilia's Hall have been snapped up as have those for the opera performances of Fidelio by Opera de Lyon and Dido and Aeneas andBluebeard's Castle by Opera Frankfurt.

The Festival has released additional tickets for American Lulu and the epic production of Coriolanus by Beijing People's Art Theatre.

Tickets are still available to see Michael Gambon on stage at the Lyceum in Beckett's Eh Joe, Peter Egan in First Love and a handful left for Patti Smith and Philip Glass performing together in The Poet Speaks at The Playhouse. The last remaining priority tickets for the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert are now available as are tickets to experience it up close in Princes Street Gardens.

There are still tickets to a many great shows which can be bought through Hub Tickets on +44 (0)131 473 2000 andwww.eif.co.uk

For those looking for help to navigate the wide range of talks, concerts, theatre shows and dance performances at the Festival the website now carries Suggest My Fest, a fun and addictive new app to help audiences to curate their own Festival experiences. Suggest My Fest was developed with Storm Ideas, in collaboration with Festivals Edinburgh Innovation Lab, with support from Scottish Enterprise.

The Festival has also been working with FreeAgent to produce BackBoard, an interactive social media and location-based dashboard. BackBoard uses all of the checkins on Facebook and Foursquare from Edinburgh International Festival venues and displays them on a map. Areas with high levels of activity will pulse with excitement and the dashboard will also aggregate the hot topics around #EdintFest on Twitter, encouraging people to contribute to the online conversation.

The website carries all details of discounts, offering a range of people access to half price tickets, and those 26 or under the opportunity of £8 day tickets to the best seats still available.

The Festival's official broadcast partnership with BBC Radio 3 ensures that those not able to enjoy the Queen's Hall concerts in person can tune into BBC Radio 3 to enjoy all weekday concerts broadcast live, as well as a number of other concerts broadcast later this month and next.

Jonathan Mills, Festival Director, concluded: 'Join in, it's going to be a fun three weeks taking us up to our traditional fantastic finale, the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert.'