Fergus is a complete and well-rounded musician, a passionate communicator and consummate performer, a composer of elegant, nuanced and captivating music as well as a pianist and improviser of exceptional ability and originality.
Fergus McCreadie burst onto the national scene with his self-released debut album Turas in 2018. Rooted in a Scottish folk tradition and expressing advanced rhythmical flair, the album sparked a wake of interest from global promoters and industry, collecting Album of the Year at the Parliamentary and Scottish Jazz Awards and shortlisted for the cross-genre Scottish Album of the Year Award 2019. In 2018 he was a BBC Jazz Musician of the Year Finalist.
With his trio, featuring long term cohorts David Bowden and Stephen Henderson, he encompasses a rare freshness of sound in this well-trodden format reminiscent of the originality and personality with which the likes of The Bad Plus and EST emerged almost two decades ago. In a vastly changed era since then, Fergus and his trio, with their profoundly mesmerising and compelling music, look set to evoke similar trajectories in developing a global audience. They certainly have the necessary instrumental command, communication and originality.
Pianist Fergus McCreadie is one of Scotland’s most exciting young talents. Born in Jamestown, near Strathpeffer, he grew up in Dollar and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018.
As well as winning the prestigious Peter Whittingham Jazz Award with his trio in 2016, he has twice won the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the year under-17s Prize and is the winner of the Guy Jones Prize, the Joe Temperley Prize from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and the Linda Trahan Memorial Prize from St Andrews University.
His trio has featured at the Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife, Aberdeen and Islay jazz festivals regularly and has toured in Norway, Sweden, Lithuania and Estonia. The group has also appeared at Oslo and Stockholm jazz festivals and Ronnie Scott’s International Piano Trio Festival.
Released in Spring 2018, the trio’s debut album, Turas, has been praised for “reflecting his engagement with the Scottish landscape and musical traditions while also showing a firm grasp of the jazz piano tradition” (Jazz in Europe). Turas won Album of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2019 and Best Album at the Scottish Jazz Awards 2019, following on from McCreadie’s Best Instrumentalist title at the 2018 awards.
The album was also shortlisted for the cross-genre Scottish Album of the Year Award 2019, reaching the final ten from 290-plus candidates, a rare feat for a jazz album.
McCreadie’s music is an innovative blend of jazz and Scottish traditional music. Turas (Scottish Gaelic for ‘Journey’) featured eight original compositions designed to take the listener on an auditory journey of Scotland. Depicting scenes from the Western Isles to the East Neuk of Fife, the music evoked the landscapes from which it took its inspiration.
McCreadie, who also works with drummer Graham Costello’s widely acclaimed STRATA, among other groups, performs with bassist, David Bowden, the winner of the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year title in 2017 and leader of the acclaimed, world music influenced band Mezcla, and drummer Stephen Henderson, a Jazzwise magazine One to Watch in 2018.
