True North

True North brings together uilleann piper and flautist Calum Stewart with Sylvain Quéré on bouzouki and Yann Le Bozec on double bass, their massed musical voices and styles pointing towards geographic True North in a set of tunes that draws inspiration from the music, legends, people and landscapes of north Scotland. It builds on Stewart’s previous album, 2017’s Tales from the North, mixing an array of traditional Scottish tunes, some being played on the pipes for the first time, with his own compositions, some of which he has revisited and transformed, such as his ‘Schottishe Kerlou’, here transposed from flute to pipes, or ‘Looking at a Rainbow through a Dirty Window’, which is wondrously reimagined for wooden flute, cittern and double bass.

The opening title-track is an intense, slow air, pungent with atmosphere, recorded at his childhood home of Garmouth in Speyside. Contrast that with propulsive, riff-led ‘Às, A Thòisich!’, a set of reels, or ‘Maol Dònaidh’, a set of two 18th-century tunes again featuring pipe and cittern, while the closing ‘Rothiemurchus Rant’ strathspey, also dating to the 18th century, inflates into new life under Calum Stewart’s inspired musical stewardship.