Jazz
Saxophonist Matt Carmichael released “Held In The Dark” on 16 October on Porthole Music. There are eight tracks — “Red Sky”, “Morning Geese”, “Wide Eyes”, “Frog Green”, “Flood Lines”, “Prayer”, “Golden Moon” and the title track — and the credit puts Carmichael alongside Fergus McCreadie on piano, Ali Watson on bass and Chris Amer on guitar. Three of them had been previewed between July and October.
It is his fourth album, after “Where Will The River Flow” (2021), “Marram” (2022) and “Dancing With Embers” (2025). McCreadie and Watson were both on the first one. What is new is the strings and the guitar: there is Charlie Stewart, who plays fiddle and bass as well, and two guitarists from opposite directions: Amer, who comes from folk, and James MacKay, who comes from jazz and experimental playing.
Carmichael says picking up the guitar changed how he writes: “With the guitar there’s that childlike feeling of wonder, not knowing the fretboard well. Following your ear. It was a really refreshing thing.” While he was making it, he says, he listened to “a lot of people like Nick Drake, Sufjan Stevens and Elliott Smith, people who just sing with the guitar”.
Carmichael was born in Inverness and grew up outside Glasgow, and he puts the shape of his music down to that: “I think if I’d stayed [in London], I would’ve got used to it. I think my music would probably be quite different if I’d stayed in London.”
On 17 November he plays Cecil Sharp House in London, in the EFG London Jazz Festival, with the full septet. “Dancing With Embers” had come out on 28 March 2025, a year and a half earlier.
Text by Aina Torrents