Eyemouth harbours jazz ambitions

The Eyemouth Hippodrome in Berwickshire launches a new programme of jazz concerts when the venue welcomes the New Focus Duo on Sunday, September 18.
Consisting of Scottish National Jazz Orchestra saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski and pianist-composer-arranger Euan Stevenson, New Focus Duo is the scaled down edition of a group that can comprise jazz quartet, string quartet, concert harp and flute and features on two albums, the most recent being New Focus on Song, which was released on Whirlwind Recordings in August.

The September 18 concert is the precursor for visits to the coastal town, which lies just nine miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, by violinist Jyotsna Srikanth’s Indo-jazz fusion group, Bangalore Dreams on November 19 and Paris-based Californian pianist Louis Durra’s trio on November 27.
“We’ve wanted to expand the range of music we promote for some time,” says the venue’s programmer Paula Tod. “There’s been a strong folk and traditional music presence but to hear high quality jazz regularly people around here would normally have to travel down to Newcastle or up to Edinburgh. We promoted a concert by the Italian guitarist Simone Gubbiotti’s trio in May and the audience response was positive, so we’ll be interested to see how the New Focus concert goes. We’re really looking forward to having them here.”
A further series of monthly concerts is planned from February to June, including saxophonist Brian Molley’s quartet, Edinburgh collective Playtime and young Glasgow quartet Square One, and Paula Tod is hoping this will help to establish jazz as a regular feature of the Hippodrome programme in the long term.