The Edinburgh International Festival has a ‘digital media partner’ for the first time this year, in the form of “cutting through classical” website Sinfini Music.

As part of the tie-up Sinfini is publishing a range of features about EIF’s always extensive classical music programme, and as part of that it is presenting SoundBites, a series of podcasts hosted by Radio 3’s Sara Mohr-Pietsch (pictured), who will chat to many of the musicians taking part in this year’s Festival.

The SoundBites series is already well underway, and on launching it last month Mohr-Pietsch wrote: “Artists, it turns out, are human beings. All too often we think of them as another species altogether, but when I started my professional life as an EIF Concert Manager I discovered that they’re not. All those years ago, working backstage at Usher Hall, I met some of the world’s greatest musicians for the first time, and was struck by what lovely, down-to-earth people they were, despite the unusual lives they lead”.

“In this series of podcasts, in which I introduce some of the music and performers you can hear at EIF 2014, I was really keen to hear their voices too. Sometimes they talk about the friendships they have with collaborating musicians, or their excitement at performing in Edinburgh; sometimes they speak thoughtfully and indepth about the way they’ve put their programmes together”.