New Focus: The Classical Connection

Award-winning piano-saxophone team Euan Stevenson and Konrad Wiszniewski’s New Focus: The Classical Connection gives fascinating insights into the relationship between classical music and jazz.

In this superb, informal presentation two of the UK’s leading jazz musicians improvise a Bach-style reinvention of a well-known standard and an arrangement of the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s theme tune, Take the A Train in the style of a Mozart sonata, among other delights.

As well as being a superb pianist, Stevenson is a composer who has premiered works on both sides of the Atlantic and whose recent commissions include an arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem for renowned violin virtuoso Pinchas Zukerman and the English Chamber Orchestra. He is also the co-composer, arranger and pianist with the multi-award-winning singer, Georgia Cecile.

Saxophonist Wiszniewski is one of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s star soloists and twice winner of the Best Instrumentalist title at the Scottish Jazz Awards. His improvisations are always potent, soulful and exciting and have led to him being in-demand as a session player across a range of styles including pop, soul, folk and jazz. Away from New Focus and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra he features with the current Jazz FM favourites Mama Terra.

In The Classical Connection, Stevenson and Wiszniewski move between styles with consummate ease, showing classical nous and great jazz chops.