Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson Photo credit: Brian Vass

Scottish pianist/composer EUAN STEVENSON and saxophonist/composer KONRAD WISZNIEWSKI will be presenting music from their current album release “New Focus On Song” (Whirlwind Recordings) at a special performance for Radio 3 Jazz Line-Up as part of the series Sound Frontiers – BBC Radio 3 Live at the South Bank Centre celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the BBC’s Third Programme. Here each of them explains the background:

Konrad Wiszniewski

New Focus on Song is a collection of material that we have been playing for a few years now and when the option came to record again on Whirlwind we jumped at the chance. We had the luxury of two days in the studio this time which gave us time to explore different sounds and hopefully capture the essence of a new focus concert. The album features full ensemble playing of the nine piece and this time also stripped-down quartet versions which we will be featuring at this Saturday’s concert at the Southbank Centre.

Euan Stevenson

New Focus On Song, as the title suggests, is an album which we set out to make with the emphasis very much on the song writing craft – aiming to create hooky, memorable melodies, well structured and crafted into tight knit arrangements. This is an album mainly comprising of what might best be described as “songs without words”. We sought to reconcile our stylistic influences and so the album is an amalgam of jazz, classical, folk and pop. The difference with the first album (in terms of instrumentation) is the addition of woodwind (flute, clarinet, and Celtic whistle) to the line up of jazz quartet, string quartet and harp. Also, there are a number of tracks which we chose to feature the jazz quartet alone and it is with this line up that we will have the pleasure of performing live at the Southbank Centre this Saturday on BBC radio 3.

LINK: Programme website. The show will also include Jim Mullen’s organ trio