Fergus McCreadie on his plans for 2023

For Fergus McCreadie, sitting at the piano at the Hammersmith Apollo, getting ready to play a track from his third album Forest Floor at the Mercury Prize Awards ceremony was, understandably, a surreal experience. Settling their nerves, he and his two bandmates David Bowden and Stephen Henderson launched into a beautifully expressive performance of The Unfurrowed Field in front of a glittering cohort of contemporaries, a moment of arrival and recognition that McCreadie more than deserved.

“It was a funny one – as a jazz musician, you’re not really used to running in those kinds of circles,” McCreadie says. “That mainstream way of being, it is unusual. It was interesting to see that world, for one night.”

Little Simz may have gone on to take the prize that night, but it could be argued that nobody benefited more from the exposure than McCreadie. The jazz composer, originally from Clackmannanshire, has quietly been amassing a cult following in the close-knit world of Scottish jazz since his debut record Turas in 2018. With Forest Floor, an album he wrote when he retreated to his home county during lockdown, his fascination with the natural, rugged beauty of the land of his youth blooms into his music, as tracks blossom and wilt, churning and convulsing with the changing of the seasons as we listen.

In addition to the Mercury nod, Forest Floor also recently won the Scottish Album of the Year Award, capping off a remarkable 2022. “This has been a really big year,” he says, reflecting on the success. “Now there is a pressure to not lose that momentum. You don’t want to get too imposter syndrome-y with yourself, and you don’t want to let your foot off the gas too much either. I’m just trying to not think too much and just keep going.”

McCreadie means it, too. As soon as 2023 begins, he intends to begin recording the follow-up to Forest Floor, with the expectation of a release in early 2024. “I think it will be a little different to the last two,” he says about the new material. “It might be a little more folky, I’m trying to experiment with the structures a little bit. In jazz, we can be reliant on a certain way of structuring things – we have the tune, then we improvise, then we go back to the tune. But there are a couple of new tunes that are very through-composed, and there are some that don’t have any improvising at all. I’m just trying to find new ways to make the folk-jazz connection interesting.”

Folk music is intrinsic to McCreadie’s work. It can be heard in the yearning melodies of The Unfurrowed Field and Morning Moon, tracks that pull at that aching power of traditional song, drawing from a history that has a longer lens than human memory allows for. McCreadie, like so many people in Scotland, grew up immersed in local folk music and the older he gets, the more drawn he is to it.

“There was always a pipe band in the town that I lived in,” he remembers. “So, every morning in the pipe band competition season, I was woken up by the sound of them getting up early to practice, which was such a cool sound. I grew up with it, it’s in my head whether I like it or not, in a way.

“As you mature, you develop,” he continues. “When you’re younger, it’s just there and you don’t appreciate it as much. The older I get, it makes me feel very Scottish when I hear Scottish music, and I really like that sensation. That romantic image of lots of people playing the same tune in pubs, that does happen, it is a real thing. It’s a big part of the identity – even if you don’t like it that much and don’t seek it out, you still end up hearing it.”

It's the same passion for Scottish folk tradition that drives Celtic Connections, the festival that McCreadie is appearing at this month, where he'll be playing a piece he's written for string quartet and piano on a bill he's sharing with Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist. Celtic Connections has been a presence in McCreadie’s life since he was taken to shows there as a child by his mother, and he has particularly fond memories for the Festival Club weekend afterparties, where assorted groups of musicians engage in spontaneous, improvised late-night jam sessions.

One glance at the 2023 Celtic Connections program tells you that Scottish traditional music is booming, and McCreadie himself points to Glaswegian saxophonist Matt Carmichael, corto.alto trombonist Liam Shortall and Shetland saxophonist Norman Willmore as budding jazz artists to keep tabs on as 2023 lurches into view.

As for McCreadie himself, the early months of the new year are set to be taken up by his biggest ever headline tour. By the very nature of the music he makes, shows differ wildly from night to night. “If people go to the gigs expecting to hear it exactly how it sounds on the album, they will be surprised, I think,” he says. “Sometimes a set can be entirely improvised, it just depends on the night, the audience, the room, the piano and how we’re feeling.”

If 2022 was a breakthrough year for McCreadie, then it's hard to predict what 2023 will look like for him as a consequence. Whichever route it takes, though, he is ready. “I don’t think it’s affected much in terms of the music; I’m still going in the same direction that I would be anyway,” he says. “You’re just trying not to think about it too much and not let the pressure get to you. You just keep going and use the momentum hopefully to keep going for bigger things. I’m not sure what’s bigger than the Mercury Prize at this point, but we’ll see what happens.”

---

Fergus McCreadie plays Celtic Connections with Maeve Gilchrist & Mr McFall's String Quartet, The Mackintosh Church, Glasgow, 20 Jan

Fergus McCreadie Trio play St Luke's, Glasgow, 2 Mar; Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 10 Mar