Since the British reeds-playing composer Tim Garland is an eclectically powerful storyteller and musical landscape-painter, it was always likely that his idea of a tribute album to one of a departed saxophone hero's most celebrated works – Stan Getz's 1961 Eddie Sauter-arranged strings classic, Focus – wouldn't be a covers job, but personal 21st-century impressions sparked by the original.

Garland's powerful trio with bassist Yuri Goloubev and drummer Asaf Sirkis, shadowed by a small chamber group, primarily drive the music, with pianist John Turville and guitarist Ant Law joining for solos on ‘Jezeppi’, the jaunty final track. Garland took all his themes from fragments of Getz's improvisations, except for Sauter's ‘I'm Late, I'm Late’ – the staccato strings hook of which he hits the ground running to join, and develops into a dark, murmuring tenor improvisation over Sirkis's driving brushwork. Getz's maternal tribute ‘Her’, becomes Garland's resonant, swoopingly fluent ‘Maternal’, ‘Dream State’ and ‘Night Flight’ unleash breathlessly pounding, whirring rhythms through which the tenor sax spirals and spins, and ‘Past Light’ beautifully frames both Garland's vaporous ballad sound and Goloubev's supple, pitch-perfect bass.

Whether you're a fan of the past century's jazz-with-strings experiments or not, ReFocus is a rich testament to Tim Garland's improv eloquence and sophisticated compositional palette – and his close empathy with his subject too, since this vigorously personal music also manages to invite speculation as to what Getz, that capriciously lyrical sketch-artist of the saxophone, would have made of the same ingenious scores.