From tents to trebles: Edinburgh book festival to set author’s words to music

A Dutch contemporary classical group will play four pieces written for Ali Smith’s work, while she reads from it. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

This year’s Edinburgh book festival is expanding its slate of genre-busting musical events, including staging Japanese Noh theatre at one of the city’s oldest religious sites, Greyfriars Kirk.

Jenny Niven, the Edinburgh international book festival’s director, said such events broke away from the traditional formula of authors sitting in tents, and aimed to attract new audiences and celebrate literature’s interplay with other art forms.