Modern Vikings

Modern Vikings brings together five of Scotland’s brightest, most creative jazz talents.

Formed in 2018 by drummer Stephen Henderson, himself a former Jazzwise Magazine One to Watch, the group features three Scottish Jazz Awards winners – saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski, guitarist Graeme Stephen and pianist and keyboards player Fergus McCreadie – and the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year 2017, bassist David Bowden.

Their music – all composed by Henderson – reflects the drummer’s wide-ranging interests and experience. Growing up in Ayrshire he listened to soul, R&B and blues, while playing in pipe bands including the legendary, forward-thinking Vale of Atholl Pipe Band, before being lured into jazz and jazz fusion. His studies on the jazz course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he graduated with first class honours in 2015, also exposed him to the traditional music scene in both Scotland and Scandinavia.

Scandinavian jazz – notably the music of saxophonist Jan Garbarek and drummer Jon Christensen – has also influenced his compositions, as have American guitarist John Scofield, Anglo-American jazz quartet the Impossible Gentlemen, the highly individual New York trio the Bad Plus, and folk supergroup Lau. There’s also an African influence through Henderson’s work with David Bowden’s world fusion band Mezcla.

Henderson chose his colleagues for their creative input, energy and enthusiasm as much as their considerable instrumental capabilities. 

Fergus McCreadie, in whose award-winning acoustic trio Henderson and Bowden also play, adds electronic keyboard tones and textures. Konrad Wiszniewski brings the soulful, muscularly committed soloing that has made him such a favourite with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s audiences and informs his own group, New Focus. And Graeme Stephen, with his command of loop pedals and effects, as well as his knowledge of the wider jazz repertoire, is an unfailingly inventive presence.

As with their Scandinavian jazz cousins, Modern Vikings play music with a strong emphasis on melody with the added grooves, urgency and colours of the American jazz tradition.