Stan Getz & Eddie Sauter - Focus (1986 Japanese Verve Vinyl LP Gatefold)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Stan Getz & Eddie Sauter - Focus | Vinyl LP Gatefold - 1986 Japanese Verve Reissue (20MJ-0085, Polydor K.K.)

Sauter was writing advertising jingles when Getz called him. Getz asked for a suite of original music: no standards, no jazz compositions, nothing arranged from existing material, just whatever Sauter wanted to write. The only condition was that Sauter leave room in each piece for Getz to add an improvised part. Sauter composed seven movements for a string orchestra and delivered the scores. Recording was scheduled for July 14 and 28, 1961 at Webster Hall. On July 13, Getz's mother Goldie died of a stroke. The first session went ahead without him because the string players had been booked and couldn't be rescheduled. Sauter conducted four pieces with the orchestra and no saxophone. Two weeks later, Getz returned to the studio. He had three pieces to record live with the ensemble and four to overdub onto tracks that already existed as finished orchestral recordings. The overdubbing required headphones, which meant he couldn't hear his own playing in the room. He studied Sauter's lead sheets, entered what he later called an "alpha state" of relaxed concentration, and played.

The result doesn't sound like a saxophone with strings. The string writing moves independently, sometimes supporting Getz and sometimes pulling against him, creating a tension that conventional jazz accompaniment never produces. "I'm Late, I'm Late" opens with a theme Sauter adapted from Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, an intentional homage. "Her" is the most lyrical movement. "Night Rider" is the most rhythmically aggressive, Roy Haynes driving underneath the strings and Getz's tenor pushing hard. "A Summer Afternoon" closes the album at its most spacious. The seven pieces work as a continuous suite, each movement flowing into the next in mood if not in sound. Getz had just returned from two years in Denmark, driven home by the challenge of Coltrane and Coleman's innovations. Coltrane, who had taken Getz's spot in the Down Beat and Metronome polls, reciprocated the respect: "We would all play like Stan Getz, if we could." Despite the enormous commercial success Getz would later find through bossa nova, he always identified Focus as his most important work.

This is the 1986 Japanese stereo reissue on Verve 20MJ-0085, manufactured by Polydor K.K. in a thick cardboard gatefold sleeve.