Gig review: Konrad Wiszniewski – New Focus
The title of the Cumbernauld-born saxophonist's new project for the Jazz Festival was drawn from Focus, Stan Getz's celebrated saxophone and strings album with arranger Eddie Sauter. Wiszniewski included three selections from that album in the set, but it was not an attempt to re-create Getz's original.
Rather, it used the concept as a stepping-off point for the musical explorations of Wiszniewski and his own Sauter equivalent, pianist and arranger Euan Stevenson. They were joined on the jazz side by American bassist Michael Janisch and drummer Alyn Cosker, while the strings were supplied by the Glasgow String Quartet, four musicians from the RSNO.
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Hide AdViola player Ian Budd prepared Sauter's string charts for the Focus material for quartet supported by harp, and made a fine job of it.
It always looked an appealing project, and so it proved. Wiszniewski brought his own stamp to the Getz material (although he has a lot of the American's guile and sensuous sonority on tenor in any case), and Stevenson's arrangements of both the saxophonist's material and several of his own tunes worked beautifully with the addition of the strings.
The Sauter material included the Bartok-influenced I'm Late, I'm Late and Night Rider, but the lovely ballad I Remember When was clearly a particular favourite among the musicians, and the saxophonist chose to repeat it as an encore, albeit minus piano, which gave it a distinctly different flavour to the version heard in the first set.