Courtney Pine at 60: “You have to keep the audience engaged”

It has been over four decades since saxophonist Courtney Pine first emerged onto the British jazz scene and his motto has remained the same: “The limit of jazz is the limit of your imagination. If you imagine far enough, there is no limitation at all.”

In 2024 Pine celebrates his 60th birthday, and 38 years since the release of his debut album as a bandleader, Journey to the Urge Within. Back in 1986, Journey was a watershed moment for the UK’s improvised music scene, opening the door for other black artists who had previously faced severe obstacles in the British jazz world to find a wider audience. Pine has since gone on to release over a dozen records as a leader, as well as produce for the likes of quartet Empirical and violinist Omar Puente; and form his own record label, Destin-E. He has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, won Best Jazz Act at the MOBOs and in 2009 he was given a CBE for his services to jazz music.

Courtney Pine (photo: Alexis Maryon)

Acclaimed and garlanded as he is, Pine isn’t resting on his laurels. Speaking over a video call from the book-lined living room of his London home, it’s clear that his appetite for imagination is just as strong as ever.

“I don’t see myself as an elder yet,” he says with a laugh. “I started relatively young, so I’ve always wanted to know what I would sound like at 40, 50 or 60. What would I be practising? What would I be listening to? What would I be trying to achieve?”

To answer some of those questions in brief, Pine is currently reading a biography of Cannonball Adderley, practising as many new scales and rhythms as he can get his fingers around, and thinking about the spiritual connections of Yoruban and Brazilian music.

“I fuel my imagination through research and my research is continuous,” he says. “It’s all about being in the music and learning as much as possible. Some artists just want to limit themselves to 1959 and hard bop – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but from Sidney Bechet up to Albert Ayler and beyond, it’s all fascinating to me.”

Nowhere is this gargantuan appetite for knowledge and inspiration more apparent than in Pine’s own discography. Over the years he has released records that test the boundaries of improvisation, varying wildly from 1990’s reggae fusion record Closer to Home, produced by Jamaican stalwart Gussie Clarke, to 1991’s straight ahead album Within the Realm of Our Dreams, featuring Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts on drums, Kenny Kirkland on piano and the late Charnett Moffett on bass; and the hip-hop influenced, turntable scratching of 1997’s Underground. More recently, 2009’s House of Legends project saw Pine paying tribute to formative Caribbean artists such as multi-reedist Bertie King, singer Lesley Hutchinson and saxophonist Joe Harriott through 11 tracks that combined everything from swing to calypso, mento and reggae.

“I felt I was being courageous because it wasn’t a record that was around at the time. I didn’t think anybody would like it,” he says. “But audiences proved me wrong and to this day I get calls from all over the world to play it. I really enjoy how audiences listen to it and then understand that this isn’t music that you have to revere. This is music that you’re a part of, which is the vibe of the Caribbean.”

Pine will be performing his House of Legends show at this year’s Cheltenham Festival, bringing this infectious, participatory music to the event’s discerning crowd. It will also be a full circle moment, since Cheltenham was one of the first festivals he played outside of London when he started out in the 1980s.

“It’s special being back, and I love playing in those spaces where you can project from a different perspective,” he says. “They have always welcomed me in Cheltenham, even though I sometimes brought a punk rock vibe when I maybe should have been more refined!”

That punk rock, no-holds-barred ethos wasn’t just an early experimentation for Pine. In fact, it is a governing attitude that has remained with him throughout his career – one that was initially forged in direct response to the prejudice he encountered when first attempting to gig in London.

Growing up in North London to Jamaican parents, Pine first became interested in playing the saxophone after chancing upon a televised performance by Grover Washington Jr when he was 14. “He was performing Billy Joel’s ‘Just The Way You Are’ and there was something in the way he played live that you just can’t fake,” Pine says with a smile. “I sat down next to my father, who is a carpenter, and I told him, ‘that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ He just laughed because in Caribbean tradition you get a trade, and music is not a trade.”

Yet Pine persisted, spending the next three years trying to convince his school’s music teacher to let him learn the instrument.

“Nobody was playing the clarinet, so I had to start there until eventually we went on a music trip to another school and the saxophone player didn’t turn up,” he says. “I snuck into the band room, put the saxophone together and just started playing. My classmates walked in, saw me on the instrument and I was a saxophone player from then on.”

Teachers still remained resistant to his musical development though, with some even expressing outright racism at the prospect of Pine continuing his education.

“I was told that ‘people like me’ didn’t go to universities, so I had to find my own ways to learn,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief all these years later. “That forced me to come from an ‘underground’ perspective, to fight the power and try to succeed against all odds.”

Beginning to venture to jazz jams throughout London in the 1980s, Pine often found himself the only black person in the room. “It was an act of defiance to walk into a space where you’re not welcome. You felt that you’re not supposed to be playing this music,” he says. “I would have my toes stepped on or have to sit in the corner of the room. The white musicians that were around would have the attitude that I wasn’t good enough.”

Refusing to give up, Pine began finding solidarity with other young black musicians who were facing the same struggles. Rather than be cowed into submission, they channelled that sense of defiance into the very music they were playing, broadening its scope well beyond the confines of the jazz music they experienced at the time.

“When we got up to start performing in the jam sessions, the lights would go on and that was the end of it,” Pine says. “But we continued because it is our cultural music. Whether it was calypso, reggae or jazz, we were playing music to the people, for the people. In the clubs, meanwhile, it seemed almost the opposite, like this was just music for specialists.”

Continuing this self-driven path through the music of the black diaspora, Pine varied his playing even further after being introduced to a number of reggae bands by his older sister’s boyfriend, who worked as a soundsystem engineer. Hired as a session player, Pine spent much of the 1980s gigging regularly for dub and reggae groups, as well as for successful Brit-Funk group Hi-Tension, ultimately honing his philosophy of live performance.

“Whatever you do, you have to keep the audience engaged,” he says. “It all comes from the American history of this music – if the audience wasn’t dancing, they would find a new band that would get them going. It’s that cutthroat and that is why so many of the American players are so strong.”

With his renown building, Pine co-founded the Jazz Warriors, a collective of black British musicians aiming to take ownership of their music in the country’s improvised scene. He also found himself invited to the States and welcomed there to a degree that he had never encountered at home before. Travelling across the Atlantic, he sat in with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, as well as developing an enduring relationship with the Marsalis family. On his return, a bidding war began with British labels suddenly wanting to snap him up as a much-hyped new jazz talent.

“I had 10 record deals and they all wanted me to be Kenny G,” he laughs. “They offered me Kenny G’s producer or his bass player, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do at all. At that time, there really hadn’t been any artists that had been given the opportunity to be promoted as a pop artist playing jazz. It was uncharted territory.”

Indeed, Pine signed to Island Records, became the first contemporary jazz act on the cover of NME, the first winner of the Best Jazz Act award at the inaugural MOBOs and was hailed as the “saviour of jazz”. As a sideman, he was also called up to play with the likes of The Pet Shop Boys and Kate Bush. It was a heady buzz that has ultimately served to make Pine an invaluable mentor to the new generation of musicians trying to make it in the industry today.

“We’ve had an amazing expansion of jazz in this country and it’s evolved in a really nice way,” he says. “I’m so excited to see younger players like Xhosa Cole or Deschanel Gordon finding their own voice and sounding like where they come from. In my day, we barely even had jazz degrees and now youngsters are being educated and taking their space. It’s confirmation of the mission.”

Pine’s fellow Jazz Warrior Gary Crosby has played a key part in educating the next generations of players through his grassroots Tomorrow’s Warriors programme, producing talents like 2023 Mercury Music Prize winners Ezra Collective. Pine is equally keen to pass the torch through inviting younger players like Gordon into his band,
as well as promoting new acts on his label.

“Record companies don’t always see the talent that’s under their noses, so there’s guys like me who go to the jam sessions, who play all the festivals and spend money on younger artists to give them the opportunity to present their work,” he says. “The Americans nurture talent in that way and we have a lot of talent here that should be presented too.”

He might have emerged from the underground to battle prejudices throughout his career but it seems that, entering his seventh decade, Pine is finally witnessing jazz entering the mainstream. Yet, his work is far from over.

“I began as an outsider and I still have a bucket list of recordings to tick off,” he says. “The inspiration never ends and I’m not setting any boundaries. I’m still up for it, always!”

Courtney Pine plays Turner Sims, Southampton on 29 September - for more info visit www.turnersims.co.uk/events/courtney-pine/

This interview originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Jazzwise magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today