Matt Carmichael

“Dancing With Embers”

(Self Released)

Matt Carmichael – tenor saxophone, piano, Charlie Stewart – fiddle, Fergus McCreadie – piano, Ali Watson – bass, Tom Potter – drums
with guests;
Chris Amer – electric guitar, tenor guitar, Innes White- acoustic guitar, Brighde Chaimbeul – small pipes, Rachel Sermanni – voice

A belated look at this third album release from the Scottish saxophonist and composer Matt Carmichael. “Dancing With Embers” was released on March 30th 2025 and follows his acclaimed debut “Where Will The River Flow” (Self Released, 2021) and his follow up album “Marram” (Edition Records, 2022). The digital only EP “Live at The Bimhuis” was released in 2024.

The Jazzmann has reviewed “Where Will The River Flow”  plus a live performance by the Carmichael quintet at Kidderminster Jazz Club in June 2022. The Kidderminster show featured the core quintet listed above and was a very successful and enjoyable event. Links to the album and live show reviews can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/matt-carmichael-where-will-the-river-flow
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/matt-carmichael-quintet-kidderminster-jazz-club-the-corn-exchange-room-kidderminster-town-hall-kidderminser-worcs-09-06-2022

Born near Inverness Carmichael took up the saxophone at school in East Dunbartonshire and quickly discovered a natural aptitude for the instrument. He subsequently graduated from the Jazz Course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow and he remains based in that city.

In addition to leading his own groups Carmichael has also performed with vocalist Luca Manning, bassist Mark Hendry and the bands corto.alto and Fat Suit. Significantly he has also collaborated with folk musicians such as fiddler Charlie Stewart and singer Josie Duncan.

A frequent award winner Carmichael was the recipient of the 2019 Peter Whittingham Development Award, this prestigious prize, together with a successful Crowdfunder campaign, helping to finance the recording of “Where Will The River Flow”. The album was recorded to the highest professional standards at QuietMoney Studios in Hastings in March 2020, just before the first Covid lockdown.

Carmichael was a finalist in the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition in 2020, an event that formed part of the EFG London Jazz Festival and which was also broadcast on national television. The competition was eventually won by the London based pianist Deschanel Gordon but all of the finalists will have benefited from their appearances on national TV.

I was particularly impressed with Carmichael’s performance. He was the only finalist to have the courage and conviction to play his own, original music exclusively and in a competition where the technical ability of the musicians was a given his bravery should have been awarded with the overall victory – IMHO. Great exposure though, nevertheless, and Gordon is a brilliant musician too.

“Where Will The River Flow” featured the quartet of Carmichael, McCreadie, Watson and Potter First formed in 2016 the group was initially inspired by pianist Keith Jarrett’s “Belonging” quartet featuring the Scandinavian musicians Jan Garbarek (saxophones), Palle Danielsson (double bass) and Jon Christensen (drums).

Perhaps even more influential for Carmichael was Garbarek’s use of folk melodies in the Norwegian’s own solo work. In Carmichael’s case he draws inspiration from the traditional music of his native Scotland and on “Where Will The River Flow” he demonstrates a remarkable gift for folk inspired melody. It’s a quality that he shares with McCreadie, the leader of his own group, whose folk informed brand of jazz in the piano trio format has won him considerable international acclaim.

“Where Will The River Flow” also found favour with the jazz media and jazz public alike and its success led to Carmichael signing to the Prestigious UK label Edition Records (also the home of the McCreadie Trio) for his second album “Marram”, which was released in the Autumn of 2022. “Marram” subsequently won the prize for Best Album at the Scottish Jazz Awards.

“Marram” featured the same personnel as the debut with the addition of the award winning folk fiddler Charlie Stewart, who brought an even stronger Celtic feel to Carmichael’s music. That process continues on “Dancing With Embers” which sees the core quintet augmented on various tracks by guitarists Chris Amer and Innes White, piper Brighde Chaimbeul and vocalist Rachel Sermanni.

The new album sees Carmichael adopting a new compositional approach inspired by the music of singer songwriters such as Adrianne Lenker and Bon Iver. He states;
“I listened to more singer-songwriters than anything else in the time period I wrote ‘Dances With Embers’ and wanted to create an album where the focus is on the song and not so much on having any typical jazz solos, although on live gigs the band have free rein and improvisation is at the core, but I approached the recording of this album a little differently”.

The twelve compositions were inspired by the Isle of Arran where the young Carmichael enjoyed many family holidays. He writes at the piano and the evocative opening track “A Distant Glow” finds him improvising at the keyboard around the theme of the later track “Beckoning Night”. He’s accompanied by Stewart on fiddle and Amer on electric guitar, who both make vital and distinctive contributions. Carmichael says of his piano playing here;
“I’d never recorded myself playing piano before this album and lack the technical skill I have on saxophone, but it felt natural to play on a few tracks. My way of processing emotions and meditating in some way is through improvising at the piano every day. I like the intimate vulnerability of those tracks and they give the listener a more direct insight into the creation of my music.”

“Flint” is inspired by Carmichael’s childhood experiences of collecting pieces of flint on the beach and subsequently trying to start fires with them. McCreadie takes over at the piano as the core quintet, augmented by the acoustic guitar of White, give another evocative performance featuring the folk inspired melodies of the leader’s tenor sax and Stewart’s fiddle. There are moments when Potter’s percussion seems to simulate the sounds of two pieces of flint being struck together.

“Stone Skimmer” is another piece inspired by Carmichael’s childhood activities on Arran. It also draws inspiration from the music of the US singer / songwriter/ guitarist Adrianne Lenker and acoustic guitarist White plays an even greater role on this piece. Carmichael describes this tune as being “very cyclic, but with a forward motion”. Tenor sax, fiddle and piano variously share the melodic lead while Carmichael explains White’s role thus; “This album is the first time I’ve had acoustic guitar in my music and I love the texture this brings to this track. I listen to a lot of music with the acoustic guitar and really wanted to bring this into the sound world of ‘Dancing With Embers’”.

Carmichael’s father was a church minister and the young saxophonist often used to play in church, his sax leading the hymns. It’s an experience that informs the brief but evocative “Restful Sky”, a tune with a suitably hymnal quality.

“Road From The Sea” is a follow on to a track on the “Marram” album called “Road To The Sea”. Carmichael describes the new tune as “a song from the same place, but from a different time and a different direction”. There’s a nostalgic feel to a piece that manages to be simultaneously jaunty and reflective and which features the playing of the core core quintet augmented by the sounds of both guitarists, with Amer and White helping to bring additional depth and texture to an already very evocative piece of music.

Title track “Dancing With Embers” was recorded in several different guises, varying from what Carmichael describes as “one long epic version” to “a stripped back version”. It’s the latter, with its “focus solely on the melody” that prevails here. Carmichael comments that “one of the special things about working with improvising musicians is the way in which the music is interpreted differently each time and simple melodies like ‘Dancing With Embers’ can be very malleable depending on the energy and feeling in the room in the moment”.
He also explains that this piece was chosen as the title track as it “encompasses the flickering in and out of influences from the jazz and folk traditions”. He also views his three albums to date as a trilogy, with “Dancing With Embers” the final chapter in this first phase of his jazz career. He hints at placing a greater emphasis on improvisation as representing his next move. The two guitarists again play a significant role here as they underpin the beguiling sax and fiddle melodies.

“Beckoning Night”, which also forms the basis for the opening track, commences with the sound of the leader’s unaccompanied tenor sax, joined first by Stewart’s fiddle and then by the haunting sound of Chaimbeul’s small pipes.

The pipes also feature on “Aglow”, a musical depiction of the warmth of a campfire blazing on the beach. It’s one of several tunes that Carmichael wrote specifically for Chaimbeul in the period leading up to the album. In the end only two ended up being used due to time restrictions, but Carmichael hints that he and Chaimbeul may work together again in the future. It’s rare for the small pipes to be heard in a contemporary jazz context and in Carmichael’s own words “we only really scratched the surface creatively”.  This second piece also features the other members of the core quintet, who augment and enhance the interplay between Carmichael and Chaimbeul.

“Blue Hour” refers that time of the evening when “the orange of the sun has faded and the colours of the sky give off an all encompassing blue hue that begins to grow darker”. There’s a lilting, gently melancholic mood to this piece, which is paced by McCreadie’s piano motif and features contributions from guitarists Amer and White alongside Carmichael’s breathy tenor sax and Stewart’s ruminative fiddle.

“Mangata” takes its title from a Swedish word meaning “the reflection of moonlight on the water”. On learning the phrase Carmichael stored it away as a possible tune title and here it is given voice, literally, by Rachel Sermanni, a Scottish singer-songwriter with five full length albums plus a number of EPs to her credit. Sermanni adds her evocative wordless vocals to one of Carmichael’s most beautiful melodies, with the saxophonist and McCreadie also playing key roles in the arrangement.

“Kite” draws inspiration from acknowledged influences Bon Iver and Adrianne Lenker and has proved to be one of the most popular items on the album. It’s the piece that radio programmers choose to broadcast and I seem to recall hearing it first on Soweto Kinch’s ‘Round Midnight programme on BBC Radio 3. Played by the core quintet, augmented by White, it commences with the sound of McCreadie’s rippling piano arpeggios, plus understated bass and brushed drum accompaniment. Softly melancholic but highly melodic it’s a highly appealing piece that gradually gathers momentum over the course of its five minute or so duration and which includes some of the most orthodox tenor sax soloing of the album, a totally convincing amalgam of those jazz and folk influences.

The album closes with “Woodsmoke”, a companion piece to the opener that again features Carmichael on piano accompanied by Stewart on Fiddle and Amer on electric guitar. The performance is a largely improvised first take, with Carmichael just instructing Stewart and Amer to follow his lead. “Chris’ guitar captures the last embers whilst Charlie’s fiddle creates the blurry haze of woodsmoke”, opines Carmichael, and it’s hard to disagree with him as this delightful and highly evocative album draws to a close.

Carmichael’s merging of jazz and folk influences is a particularly Scottish characteristic. Cross pollination between musical genres, particularly jazz and folk, has long been a characteristic of the small but fertile Scottish music scene, with jazz musicians such as trumpeter Colin Steele, drummer Tom Bancroft and others regularly collaborating with folk artists and integrating folk melodies into their music. In this sense Carmichael, and McCreadie come from a proud tradition and their music represents a particularly distinctive brand of Scottish jazz, with their groups basing their improvisations around strong, folk inspired original melodies.

Over the course of his three albums to date Carmichael has established his own distinctive voice within this proud Scottish jazz / folk tradition. With its greater focus on ensemble playing and with its significant contributions from guests Amer, White, Chaimbeul and Sermanni it’s almost his most ambitious and diverse set thus far and a worthy successor to past glories. If this album represents a ‘pulling down of the curtain’ on the first act of Carmichael’s career it will be very interesting to see what he chooses to do next, although I suspect that the blending of jazz and folk influences will continue to play a huge role in his music.

In the meantime “Dances With Embers” is highly recommended and is available from Carmichael’s Bandcamp page here;
https://mattcarmichaelmusic.bandcamp.com/music

 

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