Classic Recordings, Stan Getz - Focus

The idea of jazz 'with strings' (two words that send a shudder down the back of many a jazz fan, conjuring images of a bland musical no-man’s land, halfway between jazz and muzak) was a curious concept. Was it a form of artistic gentrification, an attempt to make jazz palatable to conservative audiences more in tune with Mantovani and light classical, or a valid conduit for an artist’s creativity? The most famous example, and one of the first, was Charlie Parker with Strings, an album that was derided by many jazz critics at the time for apparently selling-out on his bebop legacy, but became by far his biggest commercial success, and holds up reasonably well to this day, despite the schmaltz. But if I were asked to propose a ‘with Strings’ album that is a complete success, it would have to be Stan Getz’s Focus. In 1961 Getz was still a couple of years away from the huge commercial success of Getz/Gilberto the best-selling bossa nova collaboration with composer and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim, guitarist and singer João Gilberto and his wife Astrud Gilberto (who sang on the famous Girl from Ipanema). Idolising Lester Young’s smooth tenor tone, Getz spent the forties in swing bands and then, influenced by the hard-bop of Horace Silver (with whom he worked for a while), moved into smaller groups in the fifties. Getz was at something of a crossroads in the early sixties, a period when mainstream interest in jazz was waning, and yet he was better positioned than most, having a contract with Verve, and he clearly wanted to try something new on Focus.

Crucial to the success of Focus are Eddie Sauter’s adventurous arrangements. As one of the top swing-era arrangers, having provided innovative charts for the Red Norvo and Benny Goodman big bands as a young man, his jazz credentials were impeccable. And yet his primary influence was classical music, not jazz, and when Getz commissioned him to compose and arrange the music for Focus he made the most of the opportunity to experiment. Sauter sets his stall from the get go, with the breathless opening bars of I’m late, I’m late being directly influenced (or rather, lifted) from the second movement of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, with Sauter turning that piece’s rhythmic drive into a kind of riff for Getz to dance about to. Bartókhad been something of a role model and mentor to Sauter in the forties, their paths having crossed in the Benny Goodman band (Goodman had commissioned the piece Contrasts in 1938, famously recorded with Goodman on clarinet, Joseph Szigeti on violin and Bartók himself on piano), so the track was something of a homage to the great modernist.

Sauter composed the music without including overtly melodic material lines, leaving Getz the freedom to improvise with that smooth tenor tone that had him dubbed as 'The Sound'. Aside from I’m Late, I’m Late which features Roy Haynes on drums, the rest of Focus is a dialogue between Getz and the strings. Pan is clearly influenced by Debussy and De Falla in the flamenco rhythms, with the vivid orchestration making up for the lack of drums, or an outburst of sheer joy listen to, Night Rider, which builds up to a couple of climaxes of brilliant synchronicity between Getz and the orchestra. There are also parallels with Sauter’s contemporary, Bernard Herrmann, if you compare some of Sauter’s lean writing for strings with the score to Psycho from 1960. Even in the more romantic tracks Sauter avoids Hollywood clichés, with Getz clearly relishing the light and shade in which he is free to interweave his improvised lines. Apparently, when asked to choose his favourite recording Getz picked Focus, and it’s not difficult to hear why.

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