If music be the food of love, play on! Here are five music shows from around the world at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that will get your ears tingling.

Channel

Assembly Roxy, Snug, 30 Jul – 24 Aug 2025 (not 12), 14.40 (15.40)

A live electronic music performance encourages audiences to reflect on the overwhelming noise of social media through mindful, meditative listening. Inspired by the sonic meditations of American composer Pauline Oliveros, Channel has been created by Jack McGuire as an introduction to communal and attentive listening. Wet Hands (Jack Mcquire) provides a welcoming space, creating a live soundscape through an experimental approach to layering sound. Audience members are invited to take part in this collective listening experience and encouraged to contribute to and become a part of the ambient soundscape. Channel comprises a physical and audio environment designed to be a peaceful escape, while also fostering a sense of connection and community. Jack McGuire has previously collaborated with Dutch Kills Theater Company at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Solitary (2019) and critically acclaimed Temping (2022 - 2024).

Waves of Tradition showcases Scottish-Chinese Music in an impressive cross-cultural performance

placeholder image — Waves of Tradition showcases Scottish-Chinese Music in an impressive cross-cultural performance

MILES.

Tech Cube 0 at Summerhall, 31 Jul – 25 Aug 2025 (not 12), 18:00 - 18.55

Delving into the creative chaos behind the making of Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album of all time, MILES. fuses live jazz and multi-rolling performance to explore the life and legacy of jazz icon Miles Davis. Accompanied by a live underscore from the UK’s leading jazz trumpeter Jay Phelps (Wynton Marsalis, Shabaka Hutchings, Amy Winehouse, Wizkid), actor Benjamin Akintuyosi—making his professional debut—portrays a host of characters including Davis, as the production moves fluidly through time, memory, and influence, capturing the sound, pressure, and innovation of an artist who redefined modern music. Created using Davis’s autobiography and never-before-heard recordings, the piece unfolds as a hypnotic, smoke-laced fever dream: an exploration of addiction, reinvention, and the explosive cost of genius.

Rock Hard - A Theatrical A Cappella Adventure

Valentina Toth stars in FATAL FLOWER at Summerhall this year

PART OF THE HONG KONG SOUL SHOWCASE

Assembly George Square Studios, Studio 2, 8 – 17 Aug 2025 (not 12), 12.15 (13.15)

Blending music, movement, and myth, Rock Hard – A Theatrical A Cappella Adventure is a wordless vocal journey through Hong Kong’s past, present, and future. Performed by six singers and a clarinettist, the show follows a group of scouts embarking on a hiking trip, their harmonies echoing through time. From Hong Kong’s first professional a cappella choral theatre company, Yat Po Singers, this inventive production merges tradition with innovation, offering a fresh perspective on the city’s history.

FATAL FLOWER

Summerhall Arts, Main Hall, 31 July – 25 Aug 2025 (not 12 & 19), 21:05 (22:20)

Rooted in female rage — explosive, absurd and over-the-top — this multi-disciplinary theatre show blends cabaret and comedy with opera, musical theatre and classical music to deconstruct the image of women in society. Drawing on creator and performer Valentina Tóth’s own experiences with body image, the pressures of being a child piano prodigy, and a complex relationship with her mother, the show moves through a series of bold, grotesque female archetypes. From the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute to a vengeful bride-to-be and a tyrannical Russian piano teacher, each character channels a rage that is both personal and political. One spark behind that fury is the Dutch childcare benefits scandal, where thousands of parents — many of them women — were falsely accused of fraud. FATAL FLOWER offers a space where female anger unfolds on stage in all its complexity.

Waves of Tradition: A New Horizon in Scottish-Chinese Music

PART OF THE HONG KONG SOUL SHOWCASE

Theatre 2 at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, 19 - 23 Aug 2025 (not 12), 18.00 (18.45)

This cross-cultural music performance brings together the Chinese Zheng, and Celtic harp and Scottish Bodhrán in a contemporary concert setting that explores connection through sound. Three musicians – Zheng virtuoso Wan Xing, and Glasgow-based harp and percussion duo Eleanor Dunsdon and Gregor Black – blend traditional techniques with modern improvisation. Waves of Tradition: A New Horizon in Scottish-Chinese Music features reimagined folk melodies, rhythmic dialogues, and moments of spontaneous interplay, highlighting each instrument’s unique timbre while building a shared musical language.