Album launch of 'Held in the Dark' by Glasgow-based saxophonist and composer Matt Carmichael, blending jazz and folk influences.
Matt Carmichael is launching his new album, Held in the Dark, at Òran Mór on Wednesday 21 October. He's a Glasgow-based tenor saxophonist and composer who's spent a good while blending jazz and folk, and this record takes that a bit further. He describes it as drawing on the intimacy and guitar-led soundscapes of singer-songwriter records, leaning into an indie-folk aesthetic while keeping the improvisational freedom of jazz. It's not just a studio project, either: he wrote and played guitar and piano on the record in his 2009 Ford Fiesta.
That indie-folk side comes through in the names he cites as influences: Big Thief, Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Sufjan Stevens, Flyte and Elliott Smith. It's a singer-songwriter lineage that sits alongside the jazz, and the live band reflects that. He's on tenor sax, joined by Charlie Stewart on fiddle, James Mackay and Chris Amer on guitars, Fergus McCreadie on piano, Ali Watson on bass and Stephen Henderson on drums. It's a full seven-piece for the night, so the record's guitar-led sound will have a fair bit of company.
Carmichael's been around the scene for a while. His debut, Where Will The River Flow, racked up over 5 million streams, and he signed to Edition Records, who put out Marram in October 2022. He's played European stages like Bimhuis and Ronnie Scott's, and guest-soloed with the Grammy-winning WDR Big Band. The critics have been on board, too: BBC Music Magazine called him 'a distinctive new voice in a crowded scene', and Jazzwise noted he 'can make you laugh and shed a tear within the turn of a bar'.
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It's a mid-week one, so if you're heading up to the West End, keep that in mind. The set starts at 19:00 at Òran Mór, top of Byres Road, and tickets are £18.
