Artist Profile, Happy Birthday, Courtney Pine!

When you work with Courtney Pine, you quickly realise his devotion to the music, the respect he has for the past and for the players he has chosen to make his own music with. You also sense his unquenching desire to keep ‘spreading the word’ and engage with his audience.

With the recent reissue of his 1986 debut, Journey To The Urge Within, on Analogue October Records and a special edition of his award-winning project, House of Legends (2012), which celebrates the influence and contributions to the UK from people of the Caribbean at this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Courtney Pine further cements his place in anyone’s history of British jazz. Pine was just 22 when the original release earned a silver disc (over 250,000 copies sold) and, in a groundbreaking fashion that was to become the hallmark of his music making, it went on to become the first jazz album to break into the Top 40 of the UK album charts. It’s worth remembering that he’s not only had a stellar international career as an artist, but has also been a figurehead for music and especially an inspiration for more than one generation of London-based musicians of Caribbean heritage. Cue his pivotal part in the creation in 1986 of the Jazz Warriors, the cast list of which is a Who’s Who of like-minded performers who also went on to successful solo careers including Steve Williamson, Cleveland Watkiss, Orphy Robinson and Gary Crosby. Crosby says of the group: “There were all these different writers, but everything ended up sounding with the same energy. I've never felt anything like that energy. It was just so exciting.”

They released one album in 1987, Out of Many, One People, which featured three of Pine’s compositions. It serves as the apex of a musical movement, and as an aside was recorded in The Manor Mobile, one of the world’s first 24-track fully mobile recording studios.

A survey of Pine’s music-making and recordings shows his determination to keep the genre contemporary. We are treated to blistering straight ahead jazz, jazz as hip hop, as dance music, as music reflecting a sense of spirituality. Pine’s tenor and soprano sax playing have always led the way, but recently he’s explored the bass clarinet in a series of sold-out performances and recordings with pianist Zoe Rahman. “There is nothing like performing in a duet for bringing out the intimacy of great songs,” says Pine. He delights in the colours and range of notes (and some notes in between notes) that the instrument offers and, in Rahman, he found the perfect pianist who understood exactly what he meant. The first of this critically acclaimed duo’s releases together was Song (The Ballad Book) (2015) on Pines’ own Destin-E Records and the most recent, Spirituality (2022), moved the music on with the addition of a string quartet. Patrick Hadfield wrote in London Jazz News that “It is probably the final track which will garner most attention… Dedicated to the late Queen Elizabeth II, and recorded before her death in September 2022, Pine wrote ‘Your Majesty’ knowing that she appreciated jazz but hadn’t had any pieces written for her recently. It stands as a memorial to her.

Presto Music would like to wish Courtney Pine a happy 60th birthday and end our celebration with him in a philosophical mood. In a 2022 Guardian interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, she asked: “What is the most important lesson life has taught you?” “The more you know, the more you realise what you don’t know” was his intriguing answer. Hopefully the musical journey continues…