Festival Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, 4 September 2008On TV, when I got home, Seth Lakeman was blazing through his set at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Blazing, high octane intensity; that’s what I had expected from the Whirling Dervishes. Instead, imagine the choir of the Sistine Chapel appearing on a theatre stage and not just singing liturgy but presenting the whole missal, smells and bells included. It is difficult to convey the sense of incongruity between the expressly spiritual content of tonight’s performance and the expressly secular setting in which it took place. The chair applause – the normal racket of seats snapping up as people rise to leave – seemed unnecessarily urgent, but in Edinburgh there is always the next show to go to.
This year’s festival theme has been ‘artists without borders’, inviting audiences to ‘create their own pathway’ through the fare. A number of Mediterranean cultures have featured in the mix, and it is noticeable how fluid the musical currents are, even when fixed to ideas and ide
Whirling Dervishes of Turkey at the Edinburgh Festival – MusicalCriticism.com (Concert review).