Warm welcome at Week Of Sound - Angus Robertson

​I was delighted to welcome the UNESCO Week of Sound to Edinburgh. Scotland’s capital is the first city in the UK to host the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s annual event, which saw a range of concerts, talks, workshops, and events examine how sound, in all its forms, plays a role in our lives.

Amit Chaudhuri

Led by Head of the University of Edinburgh’s Reid School of Music, Dr Martin Parker, the themes this year discuss hearing health, the sound environment and musical expression. The programme was to educate the public and raise awareness about the importance of the quality of our sound environment.

I was privileged to attend a concert by the leading novelist, essayist, poet, and musician, Amit Chaudhuri, who performed compositions from a celebrated musical-conceptual project in 2005, which he called, in its early days, “not fusion”.

With our 12 UNESCO designations across Scotland, including Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns and the Forth Bridge, our links with the United Nation’s global cultural body is strong. Indeed, when I visited the global headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, we celebrated the success of the world’s first-ever UNESCO trail, based in Scotland, that brings together some of Scotland’s most iconic, diverse and culturally significant sites.

The UNESCO Week of Sound demonstrated, once more, Scotland’s reputation as a warm and hospitable host of global events and a key player in the worldwide cultural sphere. Thanks to Dr Parker, Archippus Sturrock and colleagues and, of course, the fantastic performers who made the Week of Sound a tremendous success.