Fergus McCreadie, The Shieling Review

Technical Terrain & Folk Logic in Motion: Fergus McCreadie’s The Shieling

By Sylvannia Garutch

In the cradle of dawn-light on North Uist, a trio gathered around an upright piano, the air dense with peat and ferry-foam, and summoned music that moves like wind through reeds. What we hear on The Shieling is performance and environment made audible by pianist and composer Fergus McCreadie and his bandmates, bassist David Bowden, and drummer Stephen Henderson. The music is informed by the island’s seashell grain, and the snow-blanket over Glen Shiel influences the mood of the musicians.

From the opening strains of “Wayfinder”, the piano’s upright timbre has a direct energy, its decay is shorter, its resonances reveal tiny imperfections, and the way it vibrates the air is different from that of a grand piano. McCreadie uses this acoustic honesty to sculpt lines that shimmer and linger. The piano and studio form the foundational frequency around which the trio uses to express the musical creations.

“Fairfield” is a 6/8 pulse that gives way to a texture where pedal tone becomes the bedrock. One might imagine how the Atlantic wind influenced the open harmonic movement within the trio. The interior voice against the sustained tone evokes a landscape in micro-motion, sea-air layering over stone.

The trio’s conversation throughout the album is less about solo versus accompaniment and more akin to three limbs of one organism. In “Ptarmigan”, Bowden’s double bass and Henderson’s brushwork support, and they interact with McCreadie to build a powerful, expressive statement. Their phrasing shares velocity, pauses sync, and interaction is as much a part of the music as soloing. The effect is that you hear the space being developed clearly as the trio performs with intention.

Bagpipes appear as a theme in “The Orange Skyline.”. The drone returns, chords spread like dusk-light across the ear as McCreadie ends the album with a calm clarity into twilight. The final chord lingers, letting the piano and studio have the last say.

Across the album, motifs unfold like Celtic dances refracted through modern jazz prisms. In “Climb Through Pinewood”, the reel-derived rhythmic cell underpins layers of asymmetric phrasing. Each phrase overlaps and slides, a small architecture of rhythm and harmony. McCreadie articulates his lines by building folk patterns, then collapsing them into Irish jazz embellishments.

“Windshelter” presents another facet of the trio’s language with its arpeggiated figures that ascend and hover. The piano becomes a voice of multiple layers, the trio creates a shimmering surround of harmonic fields and counterpoint textures.

Recorded in a remote cottage with a square-foot piano crowded into a two-inch margin, the album embodies a close-knit inspiration. The room’s narrowness tightens micro-dynamics; the air responds to the piano’s decay. You hear wood, you hear the room. This intimacy invites the listener to inhabit the journey with the trio.

To listen to The Shieling is to embark on a musical pilgrimage. At every turn, the trio asks a question. For example, how quiet can the pedal tone be and still hold the space? How slow can the reel-pulse be and yet still drive? How much silence can breathe between lines? The answer emerges in the acoustic interplay between the players and the composition paired with improvisation. Let this record be your opportunity to plug into the sound of wind over sea, piano strings resonating in a cottage, three musicians listening as if the environment itself supplied the next musical idea.