Fergus McCreadie, The Shieling Review

by Icrom Bigrad

Fergus McCreadie’s trio continues to refine a language rooted in Celtic folk rhythm, modern jazz style, and chamber-like interaction. The Shieling advances that system by removing studio polish and replacing it with upright-piano articulation, live room bleed, and improvisational risk. The result is a sound created by the process of real-time exploration of harmonic, rhythmic, and textural happening in the room. Pianist McCreadie, bassist David Bowden, and drummer Stephen Henderson have long blurred the line between folk modality and jazz form and trio interplay becomes the primary orchestral tool.

In “Wayfinder” bagpipes open the record, the sustained drone sets the emotional horizon, dissolving into a modern folk-jazz theme. McCreadie’s upright piano timbre emphasizes attack and overtone grit, and he constructs the improvisation with pedal-anchored bass tones and flickering contrapuntal lines. Forward motion emerges from each member of the trio to form a continuous folk-derived motion.

The memorable “Sparrowsong” is a medium-up folk-jazz composition filled with the trio’s lively interaction. Clarity frames McCreadie’s solo, which layers single-line threadwork, chord movement, and intervallic counter-figures. Bowden and Henderson provide buoyancy as the trio floats in shared rhythmic logic. As on previous albums, McCreadie’s development is motivic as themes return and evolve.

“Lily Bay” is a brief but expressive ballad. Space, clarity, and narrative pacing drive the performance. Bowden’s tone sits close to the wood, while Henderson uses brushes as harmonic air rather than rhythm machinery. The trio builds a setting with chamber music overtones. Development is achieved through shared micro-phrasing and breath to reveal the emotional core of the performance.

Rooted in reel pulse, “Climb Through Pinewood” emphasizes rhythmic cycling over bar-line rhetoric. Henderson’s cymbal language and tom layers shape the folk-driven momentum; each accent is placed perfectly. Bowden’s solo is pure singing tone with melodic patterns revealing the harmonic display. The composition has an echoing of the fiddle tradition that informs McCreadie’s compositional DNA.

A 6/8 folk modality gives rise to one of the album’s most compelling pianistic demonstrations in “Fairfield.” During his solo, McCreadie sustains a pedal tone like a bagpiper maintaining drone pressure, while cross-hand counterpoint and evolving right-hand linework build dramatic arc. Rather than harmonic substitution, the engine is developmental density in layers, where orchestration replaces reharmonization as the primary expressive tool.

The trio reaches a new dynamic pace in “The Path Forks.” McCreadie’s soloing is liquid and continuous, phrases spinning into one another with cadence-based punctuation making the music flow naturally. Henderson’s solo grows organically inside the trio fabric as McCreadie and Bowden comp with motivic fractures. It’s folk-jazz energy translated through the elasticity of post-bop trio interaction.

Arpeggiated folk figures seed an expanding texture in “Windshelter.” McCreadie treats the piano like an ensemble with layers developing in counterpoint to the bass and drums. The trio creates emotional lift by increasing density, register, and articulation, a hallmark of McCreadie’s orchestral imagination.

Henderson establishes the rhythmic world before harmony arrives in “Eagle Hunt.” This makes the album flow have variation and explores trio hierarchy. The opening functions as a drum-led invocation, after which piano motifs gradually articulate the harmonic and melodic identity. The folk-funk feel is subtle and grounded, showcasing the trio’s ability to build groove from articulation rather than pattern.

“Ptarmigan” has a medium tempo setting, brush-forward articulation, and cyclical melodic logic. This is the trio focusing on collective creating and shared phrasing. The trio’s performance is so aligned that motivic responsibility floats from instrument to instrument without interruption in flow.

“The Orange Skyline” has a sustained drone from the bagpipes as the piano trio textures broaden the folk jazz harmony. Time perception and pulse feel is an art form for the trio. The last resonance is one of folk spirit, modern form, and acoustic honesty.

The Shieling captures McCreadie’s trio in a mode of structural invention. The upright piano’s grain, the live room’s color, and the improvisational comradery all sharpen the album’s folk jazz pulse and polyphonic logic.