Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine ranks among the most mysterious British jazz figures of the late 1900s, his ceaselessly exploratory outlook having both intrigued and irritated reviewers by folding world music, pop, reggae, electronica, funk, and soul into the jazz lineage on record after record. Born in March 1964, Pine grew up in London and acquired command of numerous instruments, among them saxophone on tenor, soprano, and baritone, as well as clarinet, flute, and an array of keyboards. He first sharpened his jazz skills alongside the hard-bopping Dwarf Steps, then toured and recorded with reggae artists General Saint and Clint Eastwood. Returning to core jazz sources, Pine absorbed the improvisational approaches of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, took part in drummer John Stevens’ workshops, and later joined the Charlie Watts Orchestra on a part-time basis. He next traveled with George Russell and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before cutting his debut album, Journey to the Urge Within, for Antilles. That release thrust him into public view through the U.K. Top Ten single “Children of the Ghetto” and earned a Silver Disc award. American critics responded positively as well; the album received jazz and adult Quiet Storm airplay and moved respectably at retail.

Pine stayed with Antilles until 1992, delivering four further titles: Destiny’s Song + the Image of Pursuance in 1987, The Vision’s Tale in 1989, Within the Realms of Our Dreams in 1990, and his initial reggae project, Closer to Home, in 1992. During the early 1990s he also appeared as a guest with U.K. soul singer Mica Paris. In 1992 he moved to 4th & Broadway and issued To the Eyes of Creation, a project that fused his interests in African, East Indian, and West Indian musics with jazz improvisation. The live album Eyes of Creation appeared on Island in 1995, shortly before Pine signed with Verve.

On Verve he presented his first all-jazz effort, Modern Day Jazz Stories, recorded with an American ensemble featuring Geri Allen, Mark Whitfield, Eddie Henderson, and Charnett Moffett, plus vocals from Cassandra Wilson and the Angelic Voices of Faith. Jazz traditionalists expressed cautious approval and hoped Pine would remain within established conventions. He instead incorporated hip-hop turntablism on 1997’s Underground, which added drum and soundscape programming, DJ contributions, and a band that included Jeff Watts, Whitfield, Reggie Veal, Nicholas Payton, and Cyrus Chestnut. For 1998’s Another Story on Talkin’ Loud, Pine enlisted electronica producers including Roni Size and Attica Blues to rework material from Modern Day Jazz Stories and Underground into drum’n’bass hybrids. It marked his final release of the twentieth century.

In 2000 Pine received the Officer of the British Empire (OBE) honor and issued the award-winning Back in the Day, a salute to the funky soul-jazz and Afro-funk idioms of Gary Bartz, Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango, Eddie Harris, Idris Muhammad, and Bernard Purdie—figures central to his 1970s listening. His British rhythm section was joined by guests and DJ Pogo. The album was not released simultaneously in the United States. Pine composed the score for the two-part BBC documentary Nelson Mandela: The Living Legend, broadcast in 2003, and released Devotion in Great Britain that December, with a July 2004 Telarc issue in the U.S. Once again he merged harmonic, rhythmic, and dynamic strands drawn from Africa, the Caribbean, jazz, soul, and Indian traditions, extending his explorations into fresh terrain. Later that year he followed with the large-ensemble jazz-funk album Resistance: The Awakening Process on Destin-E and accepted an honorary doctorate from the University of Westminster. He also hosted the long-running BBC Radio 2 series Jazz Crusade.

Pine devoted considerable energy to music education, leading workshops throughout the U.K. In 2009 he was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and received the New Year Honours for services to jazz. In 2010 the University of Southampton awarded him another honorary doctorate; he also released Transition in Tradition (En Homage a Sidney Bechet), spotlighting his bass clarinet work through reinterpretations of classic New Orleans repertoire and tributes to the British jazz tradition via the Caribbean diaspora on the tracks “The Tale of Joe Harriott” and “Toussaint l’Overture.” He continued exploring the bass clarinet on 2011’s Europa, recorded with pianist Zoe Rahman, bassist Alec Dankworth, and drummers Mark Mondesir and Robert Fordjour.

The following year Pine devoted House of Legends entirely to soprano saxophone, presenting an album of merengue, ska, mento, and calypso performed with French/Martinique pianist Mario Canonge, Trinidadian steel-pan player Annise Hadeed, trumpeter Eddie “Tan Tan” Thornton, and Jazz Jamaica drummer Rod Youngs. He maintained an active schedule of touring, teaching, and mentoring before returning to record in 2015 with Song (The Ballad Book), a duo project pairing his bass clarinet with Rahman’s piano across classic pieces such as “Amazing Grace” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” contemporary soul selections including Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” and Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” and modernist jazz standards such as Sam Rivers’ “Beatrice.”

Pine moved from Destin-E to Freestyle Records for 2017’s Black Notes from the Deep, which featured British music figure Omar Lye-Fook M.B.E. on four tracks, among them the lead single, a version of Herbie Hancock’s “Butterfly.” Dankworth returned on bass and Youngs on drums, joined by pianist Robert Mitchell; veteran organist Ed Bentley appeared on “In Another Time,” and guitarist Chris Cobbson contributed to “The Morning After the Night Before.” After “Butterfly” climbed the British jazz charts in August and September, the album appeared in late October.