8th October 2012: 5 Star review for ‘New Focus’ in the Scotland Herald + Info on Album launch at the London Jazz Festival

Euan Stevenson and Konrad Wiszniewski put together an ambitious genre-bending project last year featuring jazz and string quartet + harp, resulting in their inaugural WWR release ‘New Focus‘ which launches this year on NOV 5.  They’ve already been doing a pre-launch tour and here’s a 5 star review from the Scotland Herald (reprinted below) as well as a poster with more information on the Album Launch date at the London Jazz Festival where they will be headlining at the Pizza Express in London’s Soho.

The Scotland Herald Published on 1 October 2012 by Rob Adams

“There’s something truly special going on in the musical minds of saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski and arranger, composer and pianist, Euan Stevenson. The pair have taken their original brief, of recreating – up to a point – the 1961 collaboration between tenor saxophone star Stan Getz and composer-arranger Eddie Sauter that produced Getz’s classic Focus album, and come up with original music that exists virtually in a world of its own.

Ostensibly a meeting of jazz quartet, string quartet and concert harp, there are elements of jazz and chamber music involved, but what’s so thrilling about listening to this nonet is the way all the parts move and work together, creating a melodic, harmonic and rhythmical swell that’s aesthetically pleasing and then some but also, in essence, just plain damned heart-lifting.

Stevenson’s astute arrangements must take a large slice of the credit. But he’s working with original ideas, both Wiszniewski’s and his own, that sing with expression. Wiszniewski’s gorgeous Nicola’s Piece, for his wife, is a musical love letter, tenderly personal and yet inspiring a tenor improvisation that’s so good it can’t stay a secret, and Stevenson’s Music for a Northern Mining Town captures perfectly the mood of loss and decay but with an underlining stoic determination.

Then there’s the musicians themselves and in particular drummer Alyn Cosker. This is a gig that calls for a refined dynamic awareness, and Cosker nailed it brilliantly with micro-managed industry as well as a drum feature that played fast and loose – literally – with the original metre.”