Focus

Limited 180 gm vinyl LP repressing including one bonus track. This release includes one of the earliest recordings of Stan Getz with strings, made right before his forays into Bossa Nova. Focus was more of a conceptual album, with all pieces composed by Eddie Sauter especially for the saxophonist to improvise upon. This formula of a jazz master improvising on a newly written orchestral composition (instead of arrangements of well known standards) wasn't completely new either - the best precedent was Charlie Parker's playing on Neal Hefti's Repetition - but it was much less common. Getz and Eddie Sauter would work together again in 1964, when the saxophonist recorded Sauter's score for the Arthur Penn film Mickey One.