Graeme Stephen had a dream band. In his mind he could hear a fiddler, two saxophonists, a double bassist and a drummer joining his own guitar, playing music that, although essentially jazz, also drawing on traditional music from Scotland and Eastern Europe.

Graeme Stephen had a dream band. In his mind he could hear a fiddler, two saxophonists, a double bassist and a drummer joining his own guitar, playing music that, although essentially jazz, also drawing on traditional music from Scotland and Eastern Europe and whatever other influences were impacting on his imagination at any given time. Then, with an invitation from his hometown promoters Jazz Aberdeen (the organisation that all too briefly brought new energy and vibrancy to the Scottish scene) to put something of his own choosing together for Aberdeen Jazz Festival 2005, Edinburgh-based Stephen's dream suddenly became a reality.

In the years since that first gig, Stephen's sextet has become not only one of Scottish jazz's most exciting propositions but also a band that's captured the attention of promoters and festival organisers south of the border, taking him to London and Manchester jazz festivals. It's also earned him a Scottish Arts Council Creative Development Award and a place on the Jerwood Charitable Foundation/PRS-funded Take Five initiative, where jazz musicians are mentored by top role models such as saxophonist John Surman. Such a scheme could hardly have chosen a better advertisement than Stephen, a musician who throws himself wholeheartedly into every learning opportunity and whose music has become all the richer for those experiences.

"You can't really help but learn from someone like John Surman," he says. "He played on some of the first jazz albums I listened to, like John McLaughlin's Extrapolation, which was made about 40 years ago, and the amount of great music he's played and written since then is colossal. The whole thing about Take Five is that it's designed to empower you to make the best of your projects and John Surman was very encouraging. So I feel that it and the Creative Development Award, which gave me time to write for the sextet, with the cellist Ben Davis instead of a fiddler, have set me up for the long term. Although I play in other situations, I can see the sextet being my main voice, if you like, for years to come."

The first fruit of the SAC's beneficence was the Vantage Points suite, a series of impressionistic pieces inspired by locations such as Callanish and Ardnamurchan, which Stephen's sextet aired, with Davis in the line-up, in concerts last December. His association with Davis, who also leads the Barclaycard Mercury Prize jazz nominees Basquiat Strings, is now set to continue as the cellist will expand Stephen's group to a seven-piece for a SAC Tune-up tour due to take place in February or March 2010.

"Ben's an amazing player with a terrific sound, which makes him really inspiring and yet somehow also daunting and quite a challenge to write for," says Stephen. "I'm sure other musicians go through the same things I do in that I'll write something and think, I'm not sure about this or I'm not sure about that. I certainly felt that with Vantage Points, but then I went into rehearsals and gave everyone their parts and, when I heard the music coming off the page, I was actually pleased with it."

There certainly seems to be no shortage of ideas composition-wise for the sextet, which will be playing Vantage Points and another hour's worth of music come the tour with Davis. Often, says Stephen, he'll try and introduce a sense of place into a piece, either by going there or from a photograph. In the case of Vantage Points' Callanish, however, he's spent enough time on location to be able to go back in his head.

"I'm always getting ideas for new pieces, although sometimes I'll go for months without actually working on anything specific," he says. "I also have a lot of ideas that I'll discard and maybe go back to later. It's easier when you have a specific goal to work towards and you get a momentum going. That's when I really enjoy the whole process of taking a phrase and developing it into something. With the sextet being full of musicians with different styles and backgrounds, who can all go off in different directions as improvisers, it can be really inspiring. It gives me a lot of scope as a composer."

Over the past few years there's been talk about how, with jazz being now a fully international music, its focus has shifted away from America and that Europe is now where the most creative jazz is being made. Stephen's sextet is undoubtedly international in outlook, but the guitarist's own journey into jazz from rock began with the American model and he's still taking inspiration from it.

"The music we play in the sextet really reflects where we come from and who we listen to," he says.

"For instance, just being in Aberdeen to begin with, I was exposed to a lot of Scottish music. Playing with Fraser Fifield, who's an amazingly eclectic musician, over the past 12 years has had a great impact, particularly in terms of Eastern European music. I also studied with an American guitarist in New York, Brad Shepik, who's really into Bulgarian music. But recently I've gone back to listening to Jim Hall, who was the guitarist who really got me into jazz, especially The Bridge, the album he made with Sonny Rollins. He's nearly 80 but he's still making inventive, creative, impressionistic music by working within the jazz tradition. I listen to him and I learn so much. It's like going back to school."

The Graeme Stephen Sextet plays The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, tonight, and The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, on August 9.