Glasgow Jazz Festival review: Fergus McCreadie and Sunna Gunlaugs, Mackintosh Church, Glasgow

A cosmopolitan event in more ways than one, this Glasgow Jazz Festival double-header concert featured two utterly individualistic pianists, one Scots, the other Icelandic, their geographical differences thrown into perspective by the slowly revolving, 23ft diameter model of the Earth – artist Luke Jerram’s Gaia installation – that loomed above us in this already characterful venue.

Award-winning Icelander Sunna Gunnlaugs took the first half, and while there were some elements of the Nordic spaciness one might expect in her music, there was also plenty of busy inventiveness, as in the elegant, bluesy promenade of her composition Momento. She gave a purposeful delivery of the Zawinul classic Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, eventually bringing its gospel strut to a gentle conclusion, and generated joyful elaborations on George Michael’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

She ended with her own drolly titled, briskly animated Later There Will Be Cake. In the event, there wasn’t, but there was Fergus McCreadie. The young Scots pianist, whose three albums have scooped numerous plaudits and awards, sat himself at the keyboard, declared, “Let’s see what happens,” and played continuously for the best part of an hour.

Like Gunnlaugs, McCreadie has an ear for a melody and in the course of this intense improvisatory excursion, he’d pull them out of his often hypnotically repetitive or downright torrential flow, erupting with flurries and cascades of notes. Lyrical phrases, sometimes echoing his trio compositions reflecting the influence of Scottish music and place, gradually spelled themselves out over that rolling left hand, clamour giving way to pastoral sounding deliberations.

He encored with a jaunty interpretation of an Antônio Carlos Jobim number. As his final chords faded into silence, the crowd roared while, overhead, our sore-put-upon planet spun on.