Matt Carmichael (UK)

BBC Music Magazine hailed Matt Carmichael as 'a distinctive new voice in a crowded scene', which rather understates the sheer originality of the young saxophonist's compositions that suffuse elements of jazz and Scottish folk in a way that places him in a field of his own. His first self-released album, Where Will the River Flow (2020), featuring long-term colleagues and fellow Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduates, pianist Fergus McCreadie, bassist Ali Watson and drummer Tom Potter, garnered critical acclaim and an invitation to perform his compositions in Germany with the WDR Big Band. The second album, Marram (2022), saw the addition of fiddler Charlie Stewart, 2017 Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year, consolidating a highly virtuosic, intuitively cohesive quintet generating deep emotive music from somewhere between sublimely lyrical traditional storytelling and transcendent cosmic exploration.