A treble clef that resolves into a triplet of wavelets rather than the ubiquitous fiddle head, is immediately recognisable as the Bermuda Festival logo.

It was designed by John Ellison, the first chairman of the Festival, and its founder along with the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Bermuda’s governor of the day, Sir Edwin Leather.

Mr Ellison, who died five and a half years ago, was certainly the driving force and ultimately the reason for its solid establishment.

He was responsible for many of the elements introduced in its first year, including the logo, that are still integral parts of the event some four decades later.

Indeed, he seemed integral himself, returning to the responsibilities many years later and shortly before his death.

Lord Menuhin, in a letter on leaving Bermuda after his appearances at that first 1976 Festival, seemed to tip his hat to this truth when he wrote of his gratitude for Mr Ellison’s “support and invaluable help”, while noting — as he stepped aboard an aeroplane — that there were still four weeks remaining of the event.

Visiting artists are invariably grateful for, and wowed by, the welcome they get in Bermuda. It’s not only the weather at this time of year, usually an improvement on where they are travelling from, but that they are invariably honoured guests, entertained and shown special corners of the Island by a team of hosts and hostesses.

This is another aspect of the Bermuda Festival that has been in place from the beginning, and remains a hallmark.

It has been said that this hospitality is the most important reason a date with the Bermuda Festival “ranks so high in the artiste’s calendar”.

On these and other foundation stones, the Bermuda Festival has progressed smoothly from one year to the next, with repeat visits from the English Chamber Orchestra to the artists who stepped on to the Festival stage in its earliest days, including the actor Emlyn Williams, mummers Mummenschanz, opera star Jessye Norman, and as the years continued to roll on, jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck, and repeat visitor the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.

This year, the Festival hosted Bermuda’s own spectacular star — Rebecca Faulkenberry, who played to a sell-out crowd at the Southampton Princess last week. These names are only a smattering of those in the collage of artists who have performed at the Bermuda Festival, which this year reaches its 40th anniversary and with no end in sight.

To celebrate the milestone, and perhaps the Festival’s biggest coup since Yehudi Menhuin took the stage in its first year, was a mesmerising, single performance by Yo-Yo Ma, arguably the best cellist in modern times — he has been called better than Pablo Casals and better than Jacqueline du Pré. It was, fittingly, in honour of the founders.

To put the accomplishment of these men in context, this week Bermuda is remembering the Belco riots and the violence that erupted 50 years ago, setting off an unsettled period as Bermuda faced its racial divisions and then struggled for many years as the topography of that landscape changed.

The murder of Governor Sir Richard Sharples was a watershed, but with no clear direction for Bermuda set in its aftermath, the decision to found a Festival of the performing arts featuring leading, internationally renowned artists was a brave, even audacious act.

Further, culturally, Bermuda was almost barren. An article describing the first 25 years of the Bermuda Festival in that year’s anniversary programme is called ‘Calming the troubled mind’ and it reminded readers: “Prior to the first Bermuda Festival, the performing arts existed on the Island only in pockets; musical instruments were too expensive to buy and too difficult to obtain.” Add to this Sir Edwin Leather’s observation: “No matter how hard one struggles to learn, one’s capabilities and inspirations are inevitably limited by the best one can experience.”

It was 25 years later when an anonymous author, recalling the first days of the Festival, wrote for that year’s commemorative programme: “For ... John Ellison, there must have been more than 24 hours in a day as he managed to juggle his legal career, whilst setting the Bermuda Festival on its feet; he appears to have achieved what it now takes a whole team of people to do! But in January 1976, launch it he did, with his inimitable style and flourish.”

At the outset, even the chairman-to-be was dubious. Recalling the inception of the idea, Mr Ellison wrote an uncredited and humorous account for the tenth anniversary programme where he described how he, along with 11 others, were summoned to Government House by Sir Edwin Leather: “The man’s dotty, bringing the 12 of us here to ask if we can put on a festival of the arts. Doesn’t he know it’s been tried before and failed dismally? Don’t they brief these characters before they send them out from the UK?”

Even The Royal Gazette had its doubts, and this after the first Festival’s curtain had closed for the final time. An editorial, reflecting on the original stated aim of the event, to bring tourists to the Island during the quiet winter months, read: “It’s a shame but we would be surprised to see another festival of the scale of the one that closed this week.”

It turned out to be a “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment and allowed its first chairman, on the Festival’s tenth anniversary, to reflect: “Yet it is now 1985 and come they did ...

“As you sit out here, reflect a while. The audience is gathering, late as usual, the curtain is about to go up on an event which for the size of the community and the theatre is quite remarkable.

“How often have you sat as close to James Galway or Julian Bream as you will sit to tonight’s performer? How is it possible, you may ask?

“And indeed you should.”