Award-winning Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie has announced some good news to counter the list of cancelled concerts and postponed festival appearances that has become the musician’s lot during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Twenty-two-year-old McCreadie, who was due to make his American debut with his trio at Rochester Jazz Festival in New York next month, has signed to one of Europe’s leading jazz record labels, Edition Records.
He joins top musicians including recent Edinburgh visitors, singer Kurt Elling, bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist Chris Potter in recording for the Cardiff-based company.
McCreadie reached an international audience with his first album, Turas, which was recorded with his long-time colleagues, bassist David Bowden and drummer Stephen Henderson, and released while he was still a student on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s acclaimed jazz course.
The trio toured across northern Europe promoting the album and it went on to win the Album of the Year title at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards last year, having earlier taken the Best Album prize at the Scottish Jazz Awards 2019. It also made the shortlist of the Scottish Album of
the Year Award, reaching the final ten in a field of over 290 entrants, a rare feat for a jazz album.
A full eighteen months of activity, which included appearances at Oslo and Stockholm jazz festivals and a headlining concert at jazz mecca, Ronnie Scott’s International Piano Trio Festival in London, was brought to a halt with the lockdown in mid-March.
“We’d just completed a UK tour that included really successful concerts in Sheffield and Southampton and our first gig at the fabled 606 Club in London,” says McCreadie, who financed and self-released Turas with the proceeds of the trio’s success in winning the Peter Whittingham Jazz Award for young jazz musicians in 2016. “As well as the Rochester Jazz Festival gig, we were also looking forward to playing at Love Supreme, the biggest outdoor
jazz event in Europe, in July, but that’s been put back to 2021 now.”
On the plus side, however, the trio recorded one of its last concerts before the shutdown and has been earning enthusiastic responses for the resulting EP, Live at Black Mountain, which McCreadie personally produces and dispatches to order.
The official follow-up to Turas, Cairn, will be released by Edition in early 2021 and McCreadie is looking forward to being part of the label’s high-profile family.
“I’m really excited and honoured to be signing up to the Edition roster of artists, joining musicians I’ve respected and looked up to for many years,” he says. “Edition is known for having an eclectic and forward-looking catalogue and a strong presence on the European scene, and so to be part of the output of such great music is a real pleasure.”
In the meantime, with venues likely to be closed for some time yet, McCreadie is live-streaming solo piano concerts on his Facebook page every Tuesday.
“We managed to do a trio live-stream from Stephen’s house just before the stricter social distancing rules came into force but that seems like a long time ago now,” he says. “I miss playing with David and Stephen but I enjoy the solo concerts. They’re challenging in a way but also quite liberating. I just think of a key and see where my imagination takes me.
It’s a bit strange playing to an audience you can’t see or hear but judging from the comments that come up on screen as I play, people seem to like what they’re hearing.”
