East Neuk Festival

East Neuk Festival was the idea of Donald and Louise MacDonald. Having known the area for decades, they knew that its many churches would make great venues for summer music. The first concert in 1999 featured Beethoven’s Septet and Mendelssohn’s Octet, performed by players from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. This led to an annual SCO concert series, “Summer Evenings in the East Neuk”, and then, in 2004, Svend Brown joined them to create the East Neuk Festival.

The heart of the Festival is classical chamber music, but they also present world, jazz, folk and electronica.

They use a range of venues throughout the area, from small churches, an ex-nuclear bunker, caves, an RAF base, a Scout hut to stately homes & gardens.

A new venture for the festival in 2015 was The Retreat, which seeks to encourage, support and inspire exceptional young musicians by offering a matchless opportunity to spend time with outstanding world-class players, to learn both specific repertoire and also more general aspects of musical wisdom that will influence their work for years to come