Brass Jaw saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski and pianist Euan Stevenson have come together to record New Focus, a quartet album with additional string quartet and harp instrumentation, to be released by bassist Michael Janisch’s label Whirlwind just ahead of this year’s London Jazz Festival.

The album features original music by the pair working inside a quartet, which also comprises Scottish National Jazz Orchestra drummer Alyn Cosker, and Janisch on bass; and they’re joined by the Glasgow String Quartet, made up of players from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and harpist Alina Bzhezhinska.

Recorded and mixed at Castlesound Studios in Scotland and released on 5 November, tracks are: ‘Nicola’s Piece’, ‘Intro’, ‘El Paraiso’, ‘For Ray’, ‘Interlude’, ‘Music for a Northern Mining Town’, ‘Illuminate’, ‘Dziadzio’, ‘Leonard’s Lament’ and ‘Parsons Green.’

While Glasgow-based Wiszniewski is well known for his work with the hard gigging Brass Jaw and in his writing for New Focus draws on his Polish and Scottish heritage, Stevenson is less known outside Scotland but with influences including Oscar Peterson, George Shearing and Bill Evans the pianist has quickly achieved a following in his homeland in a relatively short space of time with BBC Radio Scotland broadcasts bringing his music to an audience far beyond the jazz club and concert hall circuit. Stevenson also leads his own standards-rooted trio, and has worked as an arranger for trumpeter Colin Steele’s high powered Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra. Tour dates include the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh on 26 September; Glasgow Art Club (27 Sept); Pizza Express Jazz Club, London (13 November); The Institute, New Lanark (24 Nov); and the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen (29 Nov).

Stephen Graham

Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson pictured above