Art
Tim Adams
Both Martin Creed and Richard Wright (Turner Prize winners in 2001 and 2009, respectively) seem at pains to subvert the idea of a "must-see" show. Creed has moved on from his interest in volume (filling galleries with balloons and air) to a fascination with scale. At a Scottish homecoming retrospective at the Fruitmarket Gallery, there will be artfully stacked chairs and a staircase in which each step emits a different musical note. Wright has decorated another staircase at the entrance to the Dean Gallery in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. With his trademark intricacy, a million tiny fleurs-de-lys will soar and scatter across walls and windows. If this sounds too airy, Gilbert and George's Artist Rooms display, "What you see is where you're at" - also at the National Gallery of Modern Art - will no doubt bring you right back down to earth.
Theatre
Andrew Billen
Admission of ignorance: I never connected Clarke Peters, who played the spectacle-dangling detective Lester Freamon in The Wire, with the 1990s jazz musical Five Guys Named Moe. Yet he wrote its book and will perform in its revival at the leading Edinburgh Fringe venue, the Underbelly.
At the Pleasance Dome, Emma Thompson has put her own money into Fair Trade, a play using verbatim accounts from two women trafficked into Britain. There is more sex trafficking in See Me! Hear Me! at the Quaker Meeting House and in, yes, Sex Traffic by the comedian Keith Farnan at the Underbelly. Safely lacking in laughs should be Memory Cells at the Pleasance Dome, a tale of abduction and sexual abuse by the promising young Glaswegian Louise Welsh.
If this leads you to Wire-style despair about our times, I suggest you visit the King's Theatre to see Caledonia by Alistair Beaton (his Feelgood is still one of the best early satires of Blairism), a comedy about "a small, poor country mistaking itself for a place that is both big and rich". It's part of the official festival, but the action, as ever, will be on the Fringe. Among its 2,453 shows is the musical Obama Mia!. I confess I'm rather tempted.
Comedy
Sophie Elmhirst
After his triumph last year, winning the Edinburgh Comedy Best Newcomer award, Jonny Sweet returns with a show about the recently decommissioned HMS Nottingham. An unlikely subject, but in Sweet's jolly hands it will all make sense. The well-known, sure-fire stand-up performers David O'Doherty, our very own Mark Watson, Sarah Millican and Josie Long are all up with new solo shows.
Some fiery newcomers are also worth investigating: Nat Luurtsema with In My Head I'm a Hero and the debut one-man show from Greg Davies (The Inbetweeners), Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog. And finally, long-awaited returns to the Fringe from two very different men: Emo Philips, American comic and master joke-teller, with his first Edinburgh show in nine years; and a surprisingly small turn at the Pleasance Dome by Al Murray, called, appropriately for the pub landlord, Compete for the Meat.
Music
Alexandra Coghlan
This is a fine year for opera at Edinburgh. Dominating the line-up is the much-heralded European premiere of Brett Dean's Bliss. Inspired by Peter Carey's first published novel, it debuted in March in Australia to ecstatic reviews.
Banishing the memory of ENO's recent lukewarm Idomeneo is the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The cast of its production of Mozart's opera - Emma Bell, Rosemary Joshua, Kurt Streit - reads like a dream.
Mightiest among the many symphony orchestras filling the Usher Hall is the Netherlands' Royal Concertgebouw. Under its chief conductor, Mariss Jansons, it will deliver two contrasting programmes: Mahler's epic Third Symphony and work by Stravinsky, Berio and Bartók.
Music from Spain and South America is the focus of this year's sacred music series at Greyfriars Kirk. The performers include Florilegium and the Sixteen, but it is Jordi Savall's "music of fire and air" that is most promising, spanning 200 years of artistic dialogue between Iberia and the "new world".
