Jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie thought job offer from Spike Lee ‘was spam’ | UK News

A Scottish jazz pianist was left stunned after celebrated film director Spike Lee phoned him up to ask if he would work on a new film.

Fergus McCreadie thought the initial calls and messages from the Do The Right Thing and Black KKKlansman director could be a scam.

However he soon found himself flying to New York to work on the crime thriller Highest 2 Lowest, alongside his band.

The pianist – who won the Scottish Album of the Year in 2022 – told Scotland News the whole experience, which included Lee visiting Edinburgh to watch him play a gig – was surreal.

The film score uses Fergus’s track Stony Gate throughout, incorporating it into the main score composed by Howard Dressin.

Fergus explained: “I got a call from a New York number in July last year. I just assumed it was spam, and then I got an email from someone saying it was Spike Lee – I thought that was spam too.

“Eventually I think my manager was like ‘maybe we should just check in case it is real’ and it turned out it was real.

“After that he flew to Edinburgh that week to come and see a gig I was doing and then the rest is history I suppose.”

Joined by the other members of his jazz trio – bassist David Bowden and drummer Stephen Henderson – Fergus travelled to New York, where he found himself attending a NBA game featuring the director’s beloved New York Knicks.

He also managed to persuade Lee, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 2019, to pose with a scarf of Glasgow football team Queen’s Park.

Once in the studio, it was a case of playing through Stony Gate, with Lee showing the musicians the scene the track was accompanying, in order to whip up the right emotion.

Fergus, originally from Dollar but now living in Glasgow, said: “It was more of a playing gig rather than a composing gig in a way. Spike really wanted to incorporate Stony Gate into the score so Howard orchestrated that, and then we just came and played the music.

“I think, generally, especially in orchestra sessions, they usually just barrel through really quickly. But Spike shows everyone the scene as it is, with demo music.

“He really seemed to care a lot about people really understanding what the point of the music was and matching it to the emotion of the scene.”

Fergus, a Mercury Music Prize nominee in 2022, told Scotland being involved in film music had previously felt like it was a pipe dream.

However he now hoped to have further opportunities to work on soundtracks.

He added: “It’s so surreal, it still feels like a weird sort of fever dream. It doesn’t really feel like it happened.

“It’s honestly crazy, but but it’s also a real honour to be amongst all the musicians that made this soundtrack happen.”

The film has been released in the USA, and is due to stream on Apple TV+ in September.

It is a reimaging of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 release High and Low, with Denzel Washington in the leading role.