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Dominic Byrne plays the scales
with Courtney Pine
 Saxophonist Courtney Pine
played at the Royal Festival Hall backed by DJs spinning hip
hop breaks and scratching, called it jazz and got away with
it. By being accepted by an audience at such a high-brow
cultural bastion, his music suddenly gained a certain cachet.
A South Bank Show documentary later, not forgetting the radio
DJing, oh, and the OBE, and Pine has firmly established
himself as a pioneer for black British jazz. He now enjoys a
point in his musical career most artists never reach: one of
both critical acclaim and commercial success.
To what does he owe his
success? His virtuosity has never been in question. A
dedicated professional, a regular eight-hour-a-day practice
regime has meant his technical proficiency is absolutely
mesmerising: he was hailed the new John Coltrane by some, the
new Sonny Rollins by others. On meeting Pine you're
immediately aware of his Britishness (he says "Oh,
gosh!" a lot). He's eloquent with a warm sensibility and
soothing voice, and easily excited into passionate musical
discussion. Back in the mid-Eighties it was these qualities:
his style (he was sharp-suited back then) and the drought of
serious black jazz musicians, that drew sudden media attention
to the Brixton-based tenor-man.
Concerned that jazz had too
marginal a status in his own black community, Pine conceived
the Jazz Warriors, a big band of black musicians whose reggae,
ska and calypso compositions unified their diverse ethnic
backgrounds. "I saw there was a market for this type of
large jazz ensemble, it was something unique." It served
to kick-start the careers of Gary Crosby, Cleveland Watkiss
and, almost meteorically, Pine's. Within a year he'd knocked
out Journey to the Urge Within (1987), a silver disc (100,000
sold) and the first straight-ahead jazz album to enter the Top
40.
Success took him stateside to
the home of jazz. After sitting in with Art Blakey he was
asked by the bop heavyweight himself to join his Jazz
Messengers. He demurred gracefully: "I was just starting
a family and didn't really enjoy being in the US."
Commercially, though, it was wise to break into the US market.
Being accepted by his American peers was important, but the
limitations of playing in front of an extremely jazz-educated
audience was a closed corridor for his creative and
experimental instincts. He came away inspired though: "Blakey
told me one thing I've never forgotten: music comes from the
creator, to the artist, to the audience."
Pine's music since, though it
has ventured out on tangents: experiments with Indian,
African, West Indian music, as well as hip hop and drum and
bass, has a spiritual vein that connects each fresh project.
Like Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis he embraces new technology
and changing trends to keep in touch, and be able to
communicate with his audience. The result has been music with
mass appeal that still, according to Pine, falls with in the
realms of jazz. "Contemporary music should reflect
contemporary life. It is a matter of absorbing the influences
of today and speaking them through the jazz language."
In 1996 Pine came out with
Modern Day Jazz Stories, a project that enlisted the turntable
wizardry of DJs Pogo and Spark - the hip hop element.
Brandford Marsalis and Greg Osby had tried before, but this
time there was no rapping. He intertwined the two genres
rather than superimpose one on top of the other: the sax and
turntables improvise and interact with each other as a rhythm
section would interact with a soloist. "When you see a
band playing as one, it's beautiful, it's unity, it's
magic." It's this search for spontaneous fresh creativity
that is the dynamic, the winning formula for all his projects.
Collaborations with Roni Size
and 4 Hero in 1998 expanded further the appreciation of what
he was doing with drum'n'bass and dance mixes of his previous
two albums. By this time the critics were hushed.
It's difficult to categorise
Pine, he's blurred the boundaries that divide musical types,
but he has yet to find his niche, if he's developing one.
"Jazz has always been about the future, from the time of
ragtime and Louis Armstrong, jazz has always been a fusion
with several approaches. Certain critics are frightened to
deal with a new form. Time after time they show themselves up.
It's a lack of understanding of what a musician is trying to
achieve." Where he goes next is anybody's guess.
Courtney Pine plays Concorde 2,
Dec 5. Tickets £12 from 01273 772770.
copyright New Insight
2001
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