Forest Floor

A Scottish pianist folds the drones and lilting cadences of Highland song into a jazz trio, proving that piano-bass-drums can carry a landscape as vividly as any fiddle or pipe.

The title track builds from a single repeating figure into something that gallops, McCreadie's right hand chasing itself while the rhythm section digs in underneath rather than merely keeping time. What sets this apart from folk-jazz gestures elsewhere is the refusal to treat the traditional material as decoration; "Law Hill" opens with a melody that could be a strathspey, then lets the trio stretch and reharmonize it until it becomes genuinely their own. "Glade" closes things quietly, the piano thinning to a few held notes that sound like water settling after the current has passed. It is a record that makes the case for Scottish jazz as its own tradition, not a borrowed one.