New Focus – ‘The Classical Connection’ – Sunday 19th January 2025 at 3.00pm – Quarrymens Arts Centre, Creetown
Euan Stevenson – Piano, Konrad Wiszniewski – Saxophones
New Focus ‘The Classical Connection’ highlights the many traits shared by classical composers and jazz musicians.
Audiences hear why Franz Liszt and Erroll Garner both loved the key of D flat major and get an impression of Mozart sitting in on the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s theme tune, Take the A Train.
Website: www.euanstevenson.com
New Focus: The Classical Connection highlights the many traits shared by classical composers and jazz musicians. Audiences hear why Franz Liszt and Erroll Garner both loved the key of D flat major and get an impression of Mozart sitting in on the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s theme tune, Take the A Train. George Gershwin’s love of Ravel and Debussy and his major contribution to the jazz canon and Erik Satie’s influence on Miles Davis’ classic Kind of Blue album are also explored in addition to original pieces from their two New Focus albums.
Pianist Euan Stevenson and saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski are two of Scotland’s leading musicians. Their New Focus partnership takes its name from a project commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of saxophone giant Stan Getz’s classic 1961 album, Focus, and has expanded to include The Classical Connection. Having been awarded five stars by The Herald’s Keith Bruce in 2019, the Classical Connection has developed into a brilliantly entertaining, fascinatingly informative and above all, musically outstanding presentation.
Euan Stevenson is a Scottish composer, arranger, pianist and songwriter. Born in Scotland to a musical family, now living in Surrey, England, Euan’s music encompasses classical, jazz, folk and pop as well as film and animation.
Euan’s music has been recorded and performed by a broad range of artists across genres including Georgia Cécile, Gabrielle Aplin and Pinchas Zukerman and by ensembles such as The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), The English Chamber Orchestra, The Bach Choir, The BBC Big Band and BBC Concert Orchestra, The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and The Guy Barker Orchestra. His music broadcasts regularly across BBC Radio, Classic FM, Jazz FM as well as KJazz88 in the U.S.
Euan is the pianist, co-writer, arranger and M.D for jazz singer Georgia Cécile. He co-produced her debut album ‘Only The Lover Sings’ which reached no.3 in the U.K Jazz Charts, aiding her meteoric rise in 2021 as Jazz FM Act and Vocalist of the Year with performances supporting Gregory Porter at The Royal Albert Hall and subsequent headline shows including Ronnie Scott’s, Cheltenham Jazz Festival and The Blue Note, Milan.
Euan also writes for and performs with classical chamber group Earthtones Trio, featuring RSNO principal soloists Betsy Taylor (cello) and internationally acclaimed flautist Katherine Bryan. The trio recently released debut album Sound Tracks, a new suite of compositions (or film music études) written by Stevenson and inspired by his home town of Falkirk in Scotland. Global interest in the trio was sparked when Classic FM featured a video of his haunting arrangement of the ancient hymn of Advent ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’.
Amateur and professional choirs on both sides of the Atlantic perform Euan’s original choral music and he has also written and recorded solo and duo works for singers including Julia Doyle, Karla Grant and Julia Solomon. For film and TV, commissions include a classic orchestral film score for the RSNO children’s animation Yoyo and The Little Auk (featuring on BBC ALBA TV and the global educational platform Charanga Music) and (in stark contrast) an avant-garde solo piano score for BIFA Discovery Award-winning feature film, Voyageuse by May Miles Thomas. Throughout 2022/23, Euan was commissioned to arrange a number of songs for large scale orchestral and choral forces for designer Richard Quinn’s lavish shows at London Fashion Week.
In addition to accompanying some of the UK’s finest jazz singers including Anita Wardell, Pete Horsefall and the late Tina May, Euan co-leads a number of performance projects, notably the virtuosic Newton/Stevenson Jazz Piano Duo with maestro David Newton and New Focus Duo with saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski – the latter – a light hearted performance review exploring the many traits shared by classical composers and jazz musicians. New Focus began as a nine-piece ensemble, for which Stevenson composed and arranged music for two genre-defying albums released on Whirlwind Recordings: the eponymous ‘New Focus’ (nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award) and ‘New Focus on Song’.
Euan is a part time lecturer at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a highly regarded private teacher of talented alumni such as Mercury-nominated jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie and arranger Ryan Mackenzie. Away from music he is a keen tennis player and quite probably the only jazz musician to have ever beaten Andy Murray in a tennis tournament (albeit a very long time ago!).