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 the 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’) features eight original compositions which are 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 is evocative of the landscapes from which it has taken 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.