The Four Pillars

This multimedia project first began to take shape when musician, composer, producer and arranger Mike Vass, formerly with Malinky and an increasingly significant, adventurous figure on the cutting edge of the Scottish folk scene, was commissioned to write a suite of music for the 2018 Scots Fiddle Festival. It's based on the four major Scottish fiddle tune types – the slow air, the march, the strathspey and the reel – with four solo fiddle players (Lauren MacColl, Jenna Reid, Patsy Reid and Vass himself ) each performing one movement, accompanied by a string quartet led by Feargus Hetherington, piano from Tom Gibbs, and vibraphone and tuned percussion from Iain Sandilands. Without the scene-setting films, spoken-word samples and archive recordings of the festival premiere performance, the pieces here, recorded in a single day and produced by Errollyn Wallen, still radiate a captivating grace, joy and pride.

A real sense of immediacy runs through proceedings rather than the sort of stale reverence that can sometimes blight well-meaning projects of this sort. The irrepressible Vass has since undertaken a very different challenge, treating the world to his unexpected vocal skills on a new album, Save His Calm – whatever next?