A FORMER Dollar Academy pupil and his trio are set to perform at Perth Arts Festival this month.

Fergus McCreadie, the jazz piano prodigy who has been winning a streak of awards in recent years, will be performing live at Perth Theatre Studio on Friday, May 28.

It comes after McCreadie and his trio – including David Bowden on double bass and Stephen Henderson on drums – released their highly-anticipated second album Cairn earlier this year.

With the release of Cairn, McCreadie looks set to establish a global presence as a composer, pianist and bandleader.

His music is rooted in Scottish tradition and Cairn is inspired by Scottish landscapes, combining contemporary, jazz and classical influences.

Since he burst onto the national scene with his self-released debut album Turas in 2018, the young musician has earned a number of awards including Album of the Year at the Parliamentary and Scottish Jazz Awards, the shortlist of cross-genre Scottish Album of the Year Award 2019, finalist in the 2018 BBC Jazz Musician of the Year and more recently, in October 2020, he was awarded Best Instrumentalist at the Scottish Jazz Awards.

McCreadie composes elegant, nuanced and captivating music that is both dynamic and excites with a youthful but also masterful flair.

There are nine compositions in the album Cairn, all penned by McCreadie.

The album moves effortlessly from impressionistic modal searchings to high octane, hard driving jigs and nuanced ballads underpinned by democratic improvisation.