Courtney Pine @ All About Jazz Read more Like many of his generation of young, black, UK jazz musicians, Courtney Pine came from a reggae and funk background. Pine is a dazzling performer on many instruments, notably saxophone, clarinet, flute and keyboards. He was a member of Dwarf Steps, a hard-bop band consisting of Berklee College Of Music graduates, before joining reggae artists Clint Eastwood And General Saint. Courtney Pine's interest in jazz was fostered when he participated in workshops run by John Stevens. He came to wider public notice as a result of playing with Charlie Watts' Orchestra, George Russell's European touring band and with Art Blakey at the Camden Jazz Festival. In 1987, he played at the Bath Festival with the Orchestre National de Jazz. By that time, his reputation had spread far beyond jazz circles, and his first album was a massive seller by jazz standards. He appeared before a huge worldwide audience at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Concert at Wembley, backing dancers IDJ. Courtney Pine has continued to play in reggae and other pop contexts (Closer To Home), and is a frequent collaborator with UK soul singer Mica Paris.

Pine has done much to make jazz palatable for a younger audience, and as such is one of the UK's best ambassadors of the genre. Courtney Pine - 'I became one of the most hated saxophonists of all time' | The Independent Features Courtney Pine - 'I became one of the most hated saxophonists of all time' Despite his billing as one of Britain's most celebrated and influential jazz artists, Courtney Pine tells Ian Burrell that it hasn't been an easy ride to the top table Friday 12 November 2010 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture He might be Britain's most famous saxophonist, but Courtney Pine spends an awful lot of time in the dog house. Sometimes he's in the metaphorical kennel to which the jazz establishment consigns those who don't conform to its maxims. But more often he's down in the garden shed, practising his musicianship in the place he really does call "the dog house". Recently, the sound of the instrument wafting across the gardens of Harrow, north-west London, has not been the saxophone but the rare timbre of the bass clarinet.

For the first time in his long career, Pine has made an album on which he exclusively plays this "much hipper instrument", which he hopes will become "a new voice in the jazz world". The album, Europa, is eclectic, a collection of the sounds and flavours of the European countries that Pine has toured for more than two decades. "I've been to Budapest, the Red Square and Turkey, and I'm picking up tunes and instruments and languages and I've tasted the food – and I'm thinking, 'How can I put this story into one album?'" Tall and broad with long dreadlocks gangling from beneath a black bandana, Pine is a striking figure. His thrilling 1986 debut album, Journey to the Urge Within, transformed the jazz world and gave a platform to new British black musicians such as the pianist Julian Joseph, drummer Mark Mondesir and singer Cleveland Watkiss. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Pine later released Closer to Home, which highlighted his Caribbean roots and his teenage career as a reggae musician. He is also closer to the streets than some of his jazz contemporaries and has done collaborative work with drum'n'bass and hip-hop artists.

All of which might make an album inspired by Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, with song titles in Spanish and Norwegian, seem like a departure. Not at all, he says, arguing that the recording is a "continuation" of his story, another reflection of his life. "I've always talked about my African, Caribbean and European roots, so this makes sense. I could go and do a George Gershwin tribute or the songs of Louis Armstrong, but this is about my environment and my travels." Although the album won't be released until 25 February, he will perform the material for the first time at the London Jazz Festival on 15 November with the band that he handpicked for the project. The jazz bassist Alec Dankworth, son of John and Cleo Laine, has lived in Spain and inspired some of the Spanish elements on Europa. On piano, Pine has the classically-trained Zoe Rahman, who was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2006. He is working with his "favourite drummer" Mondesir for the first time in 17 years. He is hoping that the recording will leave a lasting legacy. "The album is deep, man. It's not an album I should be doing.

I should be making disco commercial records with [grime rapper] Tinchy Stryder! But I just had this wake up moment – 'When are you going to do one of those albums?' I thought 'Okay, I've got my own label, I'm still gigging, I've got the bass clarinet and the musicians, let's do it now'." The earthiness of the bass clarinet, he says, makes it ideal to tell the story of these European journeys. Asked if he's trying to raise the bar, he compares learning to play the instrument to doing the pole vault. "The reason why it hasn't been used so much in jazz is because it's so very hard to play," he says, citing American bass clarinet greats Bennie Maupin and Eric Dolphy, and European exponents Louis Sclavis from France and Henri Bok from Holland. Pine, like some of those others, is a saxophonist who first played the clarinet at school. Now 46, his journey to the top table of British jazz has been less straightforward than some assume.

Speaking in Soho, the epicentre of the London jazz world, he says he has rarely headlined at that neighbourhood's famous Ronnie Scott's club, so that when people tell him they "Saw you at Ronnie's" he treats the compliment with some suspicion. He saw his first jazz gig at that same venue as a 15-year-old, being mesmerised by the American trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, in spite of the attempts of the club's doormen to persuade the teenager that he wouldn't enjoy it. His hopes of taking his study of the saxophone into the realms of higher education were thwarted when he was "kicked out" of school while doing his music A-level and told there was "no point" in him trying to reach university. At 16, Pine was already travelling the country at weekends with the reggae band Inity Rockers and some of his teachers, he suspects, may have wanted to take him down a peg. The experience clearly still rankles, though he is now a professor of music at Thames Valley University with honorary doctorates at Westminster and Southampton. When he achieved fame, the jazz world, instead of rejoicing at the renewed interest in the genre, was not universal in its enthusiasm.

"Because I hooked up a deal with Island Records and got lots of promotion I became one of the most hated north London saxophonists of all time," he recalls. Even now, there is "this jazz police in this country that claim they know everything about jazz," he says, adding that "this music is stronger than them." Though he praises the London Jazz Festival for the diversity of its programme, other international events have succumbed to the commercial demands of a financially pressured music industry, meaning that an artist like Pine, who releases his material on his own label Destin-E, struggles to get bookings, in spite of having performed to crowds of 8,000 in his career. As a teenager, Pine was aware of the iniquities of the music business when he played with reggae acts on television programmes in the Eighties and realised that some of the pop artists could neither sing nor dance. "I thought what's going on, you have this person miming on stage and getting paid six grand and you've got musicians like the great Harry Beckett playing in a pub for change," he says, referring to the great British trumpeter who died this year.

"I just stuck to my guns." So he still practises religiously in the dog house, a red mark on his lip a permanent sign of dedication to his craft. His compositions usually begin on his Yamaha C3 grand piano and he composes from score using a laptop and the Sibelius computer programme. The album that will follow Europa will be a collaborative work with some of the great veterans of British jazz. "John Dankworth has gone and Harry Beckett has gone," he says regretfully. "I want to do an album called Legends with guys like [trombonist] Rico [Rodriguez], [pianist] Russ Henderson and [saxophonist] Andy Hamilton, who is 92. I need to do something with these guys from the old school.

As opposed to working with the younger musicians, I want to go the other way." Courtney Pine appears on a double bill with New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott at Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 ( on Monday 15 November Five to see at the London Jazz festival Herbie Hancock, Royal Festival Hall, Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 November A member of Miles Davis's second great quintet, the Grammy Award-winning pianist will perform the live version of his latest recording, 'The Imagine Project'. Sonny Rollins at 80 Barbican, Saturday 20 November The last of the great bebop saxophonists is still on form; his energy astonished the audience at last year's sold out show. Juliette Greco Royal Festival Hall, Sunday 21 November A muse for Sartre, Camus and Cocteau, Greco (above) sings songs by Brel and Gainsbourg and performs her first London show in 10 years. Cleo Laine Barbican, Tuesday 16 November The queen of British jazz is sadly without her partner of decades, Sir John Dankworth, but will appear alongside the next generation of Dankworths, bassist Alec and singer Jacqui.

Chucho Valdés Barbican, Thursday 18 November The greatest Cuban pianist, alongside eight-piece The Afro-Cuban Messengers, performing their new release, 'Chucho's Steps'. More about: The Guardian Profile: Courtney Pine | Music | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Miles Davis wrote in his autobiography that jazz in the early 1980s was becoming "the music of the museum". Courtney Pine , the man who has done most in Britain to reverse that trend, was awarded the OBE in the 2000 new year's honours "for services to jazz music". But when, on tour in Russia, he was asked by a child why he got the OBE, he simply said: "For playing the saxophone." The musician and composer Pine spearheaded Britain's jazz revival of the mid-1980s, becoming a catalyst and icon for the burgeoning first generation of black British jazz musicians, and a performer of world renown. But his response to the Russian child is revealing not only for his modest disavowal of role model status, but for the focused integrity of his approach to music.

At the launch of his jazz career he was ubiquitous on TV and magazine covers as the 80s image of cool, in sharp suit and red beret, his saxophone a potent visual prop. But he made a level-headed vow to the music press: "When you stop talking to me, I'll still be practising." His longevity in a notoriously fickle industry has borne this out. At 36, 14 years after he cut his first album, Pine is widely - if still sometimes grudgingly - acknowledged to be Britain's most popular and influential jazz artist; the nearest thing in British jazz to a household name. His debut recording in 1986, Journey To The Urge Within, was the first jazz album to enter the UK top 40 pop charts, and went on to sell more than 120,000 copies. His subsequent albums have sold steadily, averaging 60,000 copies each - not much for a pop star to sing about, but enviable in modern British jazz.

He has broadened the music's appeal for a new generation, partly by a controversial fusion of acoustic jazz with other musical forms - from reggae, soul and afro-beat to hip-hop, drum 'n' bass and jungle - helping steer it to club audiences and dance floors. According to John Cumming, co-director of the London Jazz Festival, part of Pine's challenge is that "he hasn't stood still. Throughout the history of jazz there's been resistance to new energy that might take the music in an unfamiliar direction; the reaction to bebop, to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 40s, was probably as severe as what Courtney's faced." He has shrewdly shared stages not only with such US jazz stars as the veteran pianist Ellis Marsalis, father of the jazz dynasty, and the diva Cassandra Wilson, but with rock and pop icons such as Mick Jagger and Elton John. His high-profile performances range from Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday concert at Wembley stadium in 1988 to the BBC1 Windrush gala concert which he directed in 1998 and the Archbishop of Canterbury's millennium show last year.

Yet Pine speaks more about "practice" (eight hours a day) and "research" (he devours biographies) than exposure. "If someone's a jazz musician, there's no hype; it's based on live experience," he says. A large and charismatic figure, who has swapped suit and tie for dreadlocks and Tommy Hilfiger casuals, he enjoys comparison with the US musician Wynton Marsalis, "who's doing something a black man shouldn't be doing - being the best classical and jazz trumpeter in the world". But he radiates a humble, clearly genuine missionary zeal. "Jazz is creative music; it's the best music in the world. It can elevate people to a higher consciousness." His status owes much to this dedication and to sheer virtuosity. The Guardian's jazz critic, John Fordham, sees him as "a phenomenal technician, drawing together styles from early jazz to experimental and avant-garde. His playing can be amazingly abstract, atonal, dissonant, but with such a strong underlying groove that it makes sense to a non-specialist audience.

He's made the most advanced jazz of the last 30 years work with musical forms that are popular and accessible, even if he's not yet transformed the structure in the way of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane." Pine's 10th album, Back In The Day, is released on Monday, while his career is broadening out, not least as a DJ and presenter. Courtney Pine's Jazz Crusade is on Radio 2 on Monday evenings, following last year's six-part Jazz for the Millennium on the same station, and a BBC2 documentary on South Africa, Bands Apart, will be screened in October. He composed and performed the scores of two new British films: History is Made at Night, directed by Ilkka Jarvilaturi; and It Was An Accident, directed by Metin Huseyin, which opens on October 24, and for which Pine has been nominated "best newcomer off screen" in the British Independent Film Awards. Billed as a highlight of the London Jazz Festival in November, he will also be the subject of a South Bank Show that month.

The new album was produced by Pine - whose instruments include soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flutes and keyboard. He approached it "like a DJ", remixing himself, "thinking about tempo and beats, not just scales and keys". He calls it "more of a personal statement" than its predecessors, and it highlights soul influences from the 70s, with covers (destined for singles) of Gil Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield and Joan Armatrading sung by rising stars of UK rhythm and blues: Lynden David Hall, Beverley Knight and Kele Le Roc. The use of his live touring band, "to make the album more British", reflects a commitment to nurturing UK musicians that has marked his career. Many young musicians got their first breaks through his bands. Knight, who welcomes jazz as "an antidote to a music industry obsessed with throwaway pop", praises Pine's approach as "unassuming: he gets behind you and gently pushes; he doesn't erect a soap box to stand on, or go about in a blaze of glory".

For the bassist Gary Crosby, Pine has been "all-important in creating a more multiracial face to British jazz", while the guitarist Cameron Pierre, a long-time friend and associate of Pine, believes "young black musicians look up to him, and what he's achieved in a difficult climate, where black folks need to be twice as good to succeed". Pine has spurred not only his contemporaries but also a rising generation of jazz artists, including saxophonists Denys Baptiste, Jason Yarde and Soweto Kinch, pianist Alex Wilson and singer Julie Dexter. "He still gets crucified in certain quarters out of envy," Pierre adds, "but they're eating good because of Courtney. Fifteen years ago, jazz in this country was dead and buried; it was an old, middle-class thing; a few middle-aged white men going down to Ronnie Scott's or the Flag and Firkin. Now more young people are going to jazz concerts than ever before - and that's down to Courtney Pine." Pine was born in London in 1964 and spent his early years in the numbered avenues off the Harrow Road, the northern fringes of the Notting Hill carnival.

His parents, Keith, a carpenter, and Violet, a local authority housing manager, had arrived from Jamaica in the 1950s. His father played ska on a gramophone in the front room. "I did all my playing on the avenues," says Pine. "There was always music out of the African experience and the Caribbean - Dominican, Bajan, Jamaican, Trinidadian, Cuban. It was such a mixture of styles, you got energy from growing up in that." When Courtney was 14, the family moved to Kingsbury in north-west London, where he went to school with Frank Tontoh, now a session drummer, whose father ran the African rock band Osibisa. Pine recalls the late musician with residual awe: "Mac Tontoh in a flashy red Lancer and leather pants: he was the black superstar; he was Shaft, and he played the trumpet. He'd play jazz records and take us to the studio. It's so important to listen to the elders, people who can tell you the short cuts. That's what Mac did for me.

If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be playing music." Pine took Grade 8 classical clarinet at school, taught himself the saxophone from the age of 14, but was drawn with his peers to soul, funk and reggae, and to the sound systems that were as much social nerve centres for mobilising black youth as entertainment. He moonlighted playing saxophone in reggae bands, "living a musical life, then coming back on Monday to do school assembly as a prefect". He began music A-Level, but was of a generation of black pupils failed by schools. "There were two of us: a white violinist and me. I was an average student, but the teacher said I wasn't going to pass and that I should leave. I couldn't understand why that pathway to education shouldn't be open. The schoolteacher made my decision for me." He left, aged 16. When he became "a horn man for hire", his parents, "deeply religious" Methodists, were aghast. They thought it "a joke, a flighty thing. Mum refused to believe I wouldn't go back into education; I was supposed to be a doctor.

No-one else in the family played an instrument; music didn't fit into the plan." This spring, when he invited his parents to go with him to receive his OBE from the Queen, "they said they were working. That generation of West Indians planned to come over for five years, but they're still paying off bills. They said 'well done'." Leaving home, he joined a reggae band "for hire to the stars". "It's nice to be in a community of musicians. I love reggae music - the lyrics, the beats - working with Aswad, Rankin Dread, Al Campbell." In 1981 he toured Europe with the band Clint Eastwood & General Saint, meeting Manu Dibango, to whose Afro-jazz he pays homage on his new album. Pine calls it "a different education: being in a reggae band gave me a life experience" - not least of the "sus" laws and police harassment that helped spark the urban uprisings of 1981. "We were on our way to a gig and we wit nessed an accident.

The police just started arresting black people and I ended up in a cell." He once admitted to having been "out of control" as a teenager. "I had the reggae lifestyle - of drugs, drinking, groupies, being arrested - that travelling musicians will have to encounter and grow from. At 16 you want to know what the world tastes like; you just go for it." But while at school, Pine had been enthralled by the jazz saxophonist Grover Washington on TV, and picked out the Sonny Rollins record Way Out West in the library ("It had the best cover"). He was hooked. He played along to the instrumental B-sides of ska records by Jamaican jazz pioneers such as Roland Alphonso and Tommy McCook, then moved on to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Louis Armstrong. His practising began in earnest.

"It's like calling up spirits; you learn different sounds then move on to someone else." Cameron Pierre, who toured with him in 1981 and is godfather to his daughter Isis, recalls the teenage Pine as "fresh-faced and very English, the first serious musician I met: If you phoned between 8pm and 2am, you wouldn't find him. The guys in the band were upset; they said he practised too much. He was always destined to be a jazz man; he had the vision years ago." Another "stabilising" influence, says Pine, was his wife to be, June Guishard, now a senior child psychologist in Lambeth who has just completed a PhD. They met around sound systems when she was a student at Hull University. Married five years ago, they have been together since the early 80s, with a son of 14, Jemaal (who plays the double bass), and three daughters, ranging from seven to three. "It's nice to have someone who's not a musician but can understand the madness. There's no competitiveness," he says.

The couple formed the Abibi Jazz Arts Group to encourage young black talent at a time when, ironically, given the form's African-American roots, jazz was the preserve of white players. Pine later became a founder member of the Jazz Warriors, the now-famous big band that was a crucial training ground for talent and the African and Caribbean-inflected sound of black British jazz. Pine had found early enthusiasts in musicians such as saxophonist Steve Williamson and the flautist Philip Bent. "We weren't college students; we played and loved jazz, but we weren't allowed to get up and jam in the clubs," he recalls. "So we'd group together and practise in the toilet. White guys would come on stage with music - we read music, by the way - and play mellow and pretty. We'd get up on stage, knock the music down, and take over, then the owners would turn the lights off.

Over a year, we shut down all the jam sessions." Unsung West Indian forerunners in Britain, such as the pioneers of European freeform jazz in the 1960s, Joe Harriott and Shake Keane, and the trumpeter Harry Beckett, were heroes of Pine - as was Ernest Ranglin who, he says, wasn't allowed on stage in Ronnie Scott's in 1964. "Chris Blackwell had to insist, and he blew them away. Andy Hamilton was a great saxophonist from Jamaica who came to Birmingham in the 50s, but he made his first record in his 70s. I've learned you have to be in control; you have to understand the nature of capitalism. It's not just about a scale and a note; that you play saxophone and get acknowledged. There's a lot of knowledge required to gain longevity as a jazz musician." Pine answered an advertisement in the Voice newspaper to teach jazz at Community Music Ltd in Clerkenwell, a charity working with children and schizophrenic patients. Its director was the late John Stevens, "a white free-jazz drummer who gave me a rare opportunity.

I saw you could play jazz on stage with anyone, handicapped or otherwise, of any ability, as opposed to only working with the cream." While on a residency in south London, Pine was spotted for Island Records at the Atlantic pub in Coldharbour Lane. "It was really dodgy, they were selling drugs, and guys would try and beat me up because I wasn't from Brixton. The owner had the idea that jazz could get rid of the evil element. I had six record offers out of that." Trevor Wyatt, then of Island Records (which signed Pine for £1,000), recalls his "extraordinary tone and spirit on the saxophone; it wasn't a rip off of American jazz - he had something unique". Others even then saw a leader with a sense of destiny. Fordham recalls the teenage performer as "still raw but with fantastic technique and confidence. He seemed to have a picture of himself as someone who would do things." His timing was inadvertently perfect, as he and other jazz musicians, including Andy Sheppard and Tommy Smith, became the soundtrack to the Thatcherite 80s.

Fordham explains: "With all that money in the economy, a new, young, champagne-and-red-braces class was looking for art forms that were emblems of quality but not dusty old high culture." But Pine's allure for a rising generation of black Britons looking for a challenge - he was likened by Fordham to the Pied Piper - outlived the 80s jazz vogue. "The so-called jazz boom didn't really mean anything to me - the fashion, the image," Pine says. "When I was at school, kids like me were buying £20 Japanese records; we went to clubs to dance to jazz music. Then you got the Conservative government; jazz in a suit and tie. My approach to music just seemed to fit the template. But we were into something different." Yet the glamorous newcomers in the media spotlight put some noses out of joint. Pine remembers snide jokes about "a black man wearing a suit and getting a record deal". He says: "The owner of one club in London said black musicians hadn't made a contribution to jazz in this country since the 50s.

So I went down there and sorted a couple of people out - by playing." Some early detractors dismissed him as a Coltrane disciple. "I thought it was a huge compliment: am I really that good? They didn't realise how powerful Coltrane was; he had a hard time in England in the 60s - a black man working with intelligence and harmonic knowledge. The Americans snapped me up." Pine became a session musician for touring US stars, such as Art Blakey and George Russell. His album Destiny's Song (1988), produced by Delfeayo Marsalis (the youngest of the clan), went into the US jazz charts. He then cut The Vision's Tale (1989) in New York, with Ellis Marsalis. Yet he turned down an invitation to join Blakey's Jazz Messengers, despite a glowing potential career in hard-core, bop-oriented US jazz. "I've never really liked the tempo," he says of the country. "It comes from being English and reserved - not into me, me, me.

My American friends would say, 'Why don't you show more pizazz?'" He also sees a hard choice facing jazz musicians: "To stay in the practice room, the ivory tower, or go out to the rave. In America the vogue is to approach jazz like classical music; to give the perfect rendition of icons like Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, as though you were approaching Bach or Shostakovich. Jazz says improvise, but it's limited: how would Thelonious Monk play it or Ella Fitzgerald sing it? I wasn't happy. I thought jazz was supposed to be about freedom." He looked for inspiration in his own own background. "I'm not an American from New Orleans whose father is a musician carrying on the legacy. I had to keep it real. After I got to a certain point with my playing, I thought it should reflect my culture in a positive way - the Scratchlights, Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, sound systems, Shaka, blues parties, Linford Christie; who I am as a UK black." He had first gone to Jamaica with his mother, aged nine. "I was petrified. I remember the stifling, porridge-like heat.

I didn't drink the goat's milk." But he returned at 21, on holiday with his wife and son. "It was very liberating to see black people in power. You like yourself more." Pine cut his "first reggae album", Closer To Home (1990), in Jamaica with the reggae producer Gussie Clarke. "A lot of critics couldn't hear the reggae bass lines before. After that album, they stopped asking." Then events altered his course. His six children were all born prematurely; only four survived. Two-day-old Shana died in his arms, but he was in the US when his first daughter, Cleopatra, died in 1991. "I was on tour with some obnoxious, hostile American musicians. I became a father, and was elated, then two days later, I wasn't. Cleopatra opened up my mind to things I take for granted, made me see more clearly. "People who are jealous of a little success, I don't have time for them. There's more to life." It was also a time of financial crisis, after losing a legal suit over management and owing £50,000.

"I was 11.59 to bankruptcy, and I was managing myself. I thought I can't just be playing standards in the American jazz tradition. It liberated me to incorporate more of who I am, starting with Africa." To The Eyes Of Creation (1992) [which Pine produced and dedicated to Cleopatra], integrated African, Caribbean and Indian influences - he had begun to work with the British Asian fusion artist Talvin Singh. "This record shouldn't have happened yet. But because of Cleopatra, I felt, 'do it now - I don't know how long life is'. She made me get to that place earlier." He said he wanted people to "hear what it means to be an African West Indian European". Pine's dreadlocks ("I've gone through many hairstyles") are not an emblem of Rastafarianism. "In terms of supporting one religion, I'm researching." But his album made explicit a more diffuse spiritual side to his music. "I've been able to connect to religious rhythms - Yoruba, Shango - that take you back to Egypt, one of the great civilisations of Africa. The music isn't just about a catchphrase of a solo, but something deeper.

It comes straight from the Creator. For me, it's a religious experience." The rapper Guru's Jazzmatazz album, on which Pine collaborated in 1993, was another turning point, that led to his albums Modern Day Jazz Stories (1996) and Underground (1997). He brought in DJ Pogo on turntables, Sparkii and the rapper MC Mello, using electronic dance music, sampling and scratching. The two albums were remixed on Another Story by Roni Size and other drum 'n' bass artists. Nathan Graves, UK head of jazz for the Universal music group, the US company to which Pine is now signed, says he "has an extraordinary ear; he's jazz-oriented but his music reflects his taste in not just reggae and rhythm and blues, but hip-hop and drum 'n' bass." "Jazz has always been about fusion," says Pine. "In housing estates you hear reggae, techno, classical; you walk through a flat and hear a random mix. But it becomes harmonious, like mixing cultures to get something different, shocking and stimulating. I'd get home from a jazz gig and play ska, or early 4 Hero, or Goldie.

So I made a conscious effort to fuse the two, to inspire myself again." The fusion made Modern Day Jazz Stories one of the Mercury music prize albums of the year in 1996, and won Pine a MOBO (music of black origin) for best jazz act two years running. The single of Cassandra Wilson's cover of I've Known Rivers was in the UK charts, and her Don't Explain was on the Kiss FM playlist for 10 weeks. But jazz purists were "stumped", he says. "Guys are the self-proclaimed experts. Women in this country have no need to know the ins and outs of the mechanics; they just like the music, it moves them. But men get all anal about it and try to impress their friends." For Adrian Gibson, who runs London's Jazz Cafe in Camden, Pine is "the only one in England to have made the straight-ahead jazz scene in London sit up to other musics. He went through what Miles Davis did in the 70s, but perceptions have changed. Now people accept you can have a reggae track in the middle of jazz.

He's built respect from his audiences by respecting them: he'll bring you into his music, not throw in something that's way too heavy, or bore you with a 25-minute solo." With the evolution of Pine's music has come a more relaxed style. "I used to say, this is the best music in the world, and, being a youngster, I thought wearing a smart suit would say that," he smiles. "But with a hip-hop band, the audience is ready to take part, dressing the way I dress every day. I decided to bring that to jazz." Claiming to have spent all his money on "studio tech" in his detached house in Harrow, north-west London, Pine is chuffed to be asked how he composes. He writes music, often at the piano, to a title - whether on Stephen Lawrence or Shaka Zulu - "as though it were prose; then I do edits and improvisation, and put in a reggae bass line.

So the composition is a mixture of elements as well as upholding or breaking the rules of the jazz tradition." As a youthful elder statesman of British jazz, Pine sees a changing climate for black, college-educated jazz musicians, with more of them "in positions of power, owning their own bands and radio stations". Yet he warns of the limits of that change and of a leakage to the US, citing Julie Dexter and Ronny Jordan. "They're leaving one by one; this generation won't stand for playing pubs for door money." His ambition is to set up his own record label, "but for us, survival is so important. I've clawed my way back from near-bankruptcy; I survive on gigs." A fan of computer games for relaxation, he praises the internet as "another medium to get music out". He leads by example. "Sometimes a person's presence is the only influence necessary," says the poet Lemn Sissay, who has recorded a new album, Words And Pictures, with the Apollo Sax Quartet.

"Courtney's showed you can be black and British and experimental and successful; you don't have to succumb to American pop, though I'm sure the industry will only allow in a trickle like that." An informal "patron" to Tomorrow's Warriors, a spinoff from the Jazz Warriors, Pine is also to do workshops with schoolchildren from Hackney, Lambeth and Southwark under the auspices of the London Jazz Festival in November, in line with his British Council-sponsored masterclasses wherever he tours in the world. "I've been given knowledge by others, and you have to pass it on," he reflects. "If someone's inspired, all well and good. But I don't sit down and do a Malcolm X about being an example; I'm still too much in the gig - and it's hardly even started." Back in the Day is out on Blue Thumb on Monday. Bands Apart will be on BBC2 on Thursday October 19 at 11.30pm. Courtney Pine tours the UK through October and plays London's Royal Festival Hall on Friday November 17. Life at a glance: Courtney Fitzgerald Pine Born: March 18 1964, London.

Education: William Wilberforce primary school, London; Rutherford school; Kingsbury high school. Married: 1995 June Guishard (one son: Jemaal, 14; five daughters: Cleopatra and Shona - deceased; Isis, 7; Jenae, 5; Taiyo, 3. Albums: Journey To The Urge Within, 1986; Destiny's Song, 1988; The Vision's Tale, 1989; Closer To Home, 1990; Within The Realms Of Our Dreams, 1991; To The Eyes Of Creation, 1992; Modern Day Jazz Stories, 1996; Underground, 1997; Another Story (remix), 1998; Back In The Day, 2000. Awards: 1996 Mercury music prize nomination; 1996 and 1997 MOBO for best jazz act; 1999 People's Choice best British jazz act for blues and soul; 2000 OBE.

Courtney Pine - Listen to Free Music by Courtney Pine on Pandora Internet Radio more Courtney Pine Courtney Pine is perhaps the most enigmatic of late 20th century British jazzmen; he has consistently fascinated and frustrated critics with a restless and adventurous musical vision that has brought world music, pop, reggae, electronica, funk, and soul to sit in with the jazz tradition on his recordings. Born in March 1964, Pine spent his youth in London, learning to play multiple instruments, including saxophone (he is proficient on tenor, soprano, and baritone), clarinet, flute, and a host of keyboard instruments. He cut his jazz teeth with the hard bopping Dwarf Steps, before leaving to tour and record with reggae stars General Saint and Clint Eastwood . Pine went back to the jazz root, studying Sonny Rollins ' and John Coltrane 's improvising styles while participating in drummer John Stevens' jazz workshops before he became a part-time member of the Charlie Watts Orchestra. Pine left to tour with both George Russell and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers before recording his debut album, Journey to the Urge Within for Antilles. That disc propelled Pine into the public consciousness with its U.K.

Top Ten smash "Children of the Ghetto." The album was also reviewed favorably in the U.S. and sold respectably. Pine remained with Antilles through 1992, issuing four more albums with the label, 1987's Destiny's Song + the Image of Pursuance, 1989's The Vision's Tale, Within the Realms of Our Dreams in 1990, and his first reggae outing, Closer to Home, in 1992. Throughout the early '90s Pine also guested with U.K. soul chanteuse Mica Paris . Also during 1992, Pine signed with the 4th & Broadway label and issued the revolutionary To the Eyes of Creation, which fully engaged his myriad interests in African and East and West Indian musics and melded them with jazz improvisation. Eyes of Creation, Pine's live album, was released by Island in 1995, just prior to his signing with Verve.

While with Verve, Pine issued his first complete jazz outing in Modern Day Jazz Stories, recorded with an American band that included Geri Allen , Mark Whitfield , Eddie Henderson , and Charnett Moffett , and featured vocals by Cassandra Wilson and the Angelic Voices of Faith. Jazz purists were almost delighted, and hoped Pine would now stay put in the bosom of tradition so they could laud him as the new Coltrane . Pine frustrated them by employing hip-hop turntablism on 1997's Underground, which included drum and soundscape programming alongside DJs and a band that included Jeff Watts , Whitfield , Reggie Veal, Nicholas Payton , and Cyrus Chestnut . Pine pulled another rabbit out of the hat for 1998's Another Story, issued by Talkin' Loud, wherein he invited a host of electronica's finest DJs -- Roni Size and Attica Blues among them -- to remix tracks from Modern Day Jazz Stories and Underground as drum'n'bass crossovers. It was his last record of the 20th century.

Pine, who was appointed an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000, also issued another award-winner with Back in the Day that year. The album was a tribute to the funky soul-jazz and Afro-funk sounds of Gary Bartz , Fela Kuti , Manu Dibango , Eddie Harris , Idris Muhammad , and Bernard Purdie, all of whom were parts of his musical development in the 1970s. His all-British band was augmented by guests and DJ Pogo. It was his first recording not to be simultaneously released in the United States. Pine scored the two-part BBC documentary Nelson Mandela: The Living Legend, which aired in 2003, and released Devotion at the end of the year in Great Britain and in July 2004 on the Telarc label in the U.S. Once more Pine nailed together disparate harmonic, rhythmic, and dynamic elements from Africa, the Caribbean, jazz, soul, and Indian musics, taking his adventurous discourse into new and previously uncharted territory.

Later that year, he followed up with the sublime large-ensemble jazz-funk set Resistance: The Awakening Process on Destin-E and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Westminster. He also dedicated himself to public education in music, teaching and organizing workshops all over the U.K. In 2009, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and received the prestigious New Year Honours for services to jazz music that same year. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Southampton, and released Transition in Tradition (En Homage a Sidney Bechet), which showcased his talents on the bass clarinet, playing not only reinventions of classic New Orleans music, but also paying tribute to the jazz tradition of Great Britain by way of the Caribbean diaspora with the tracks "The Tale of Joe Harriott" and "Toussaint l'Overture." Pine shored up his commitment to bass clarinet on 2011's forward-looking Europa. His band for the date included pianist Zoe Rahman, bassist Alec Dankworth, and drummers Mark Mondesir and Robert Fordjour.

~ Thom Jurek My Secret Life: Courtney Pine, jazz musician, 45 | The Independent My Secret Life: Courtney Pine, jazz musician, 45 Friday 7 August 2009 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online My parents were ... My father, Keith, was a carpenter and my mother, Violet, was a housing manager. They are both still alive, hardworking, traditional and determined to survive in this cold environment. The home I grew up in ... was on Bravington Road in west London. It was one room, with a steel bath to wash the kids in, a paraffin heater and a black and white telly. When I was a child I wanted to be ... an astronaut, then a doctor. Now I am a professor and a doctor of music, so I'm not too far off. The first time I got drunk ... When I was 15 or 16 years old I was in various reggae bands. We used to play venues around the country and I'd often acquire – and then consume – a tin or five of Tennents Super from the bars we played. Those were the days. You wouldn't know it but I'm very good at ...

cycling, though I can't seem to find the time or the right weather for it in Britain. You may not know it but I'm no good at ... maths. At night I dream of ... music. I drive ... a Toyota Previa. If I could change one thing about myself ... I would have been more determined to stay in school and fight the cultural bias of the early 1980s, which stopped a lot of people like me from achieving higher qualifications. What I see when I look in the mirror ... Somebody who needs a haircut. My favourite item of clothing ... SAS-style black combat socks. I wear nothing else. I wish I'd never worn ... purple-tipped platform shoes in 1970s, which my mum used to dress me in as a toddler for trips to church and special occasions. A book that changed me ... was 'Africa: Mother of Western Civilization' by Dr Josef Ben-Jochannan. It went against everything that I'd been taught about European history in school and opened my eyes to my cultural heritage. The last album I bought ... was a collaboration between Rudresh Mahanthappa and Kadri Gopalnath Kinsmen released on Pi records.

Both men are Indian saxophonists: one was brought up and taught to play jazz in America, the other is an older southern Indian veteran who plays traditional music on his saxophone. Movie heaven is ... Spike Lee's film 'She Hate Me'. It's a film that is full of everything: I cried, I laughed, the lot. That's what Spike always does: he comes up with things so out of the box. The person who really makes me laugh ... is Felix Dexter. His humour is so deep you feel the pain afterwards. His punchlines make me feel as if he's lived my life; he understands life from my perspective at least. He has a way of conveying humour that's very personal to me. The last time I cried ... was when my mother-in-law passed away. My favourite work of art ... is the Sphinx in Giza. Even though it's damaged, it has an amazing power when you stand in front of it. My favourite building ... is the Horniman Museum in south London. It contains every type of musical instrument you can think of. My greatest regret ... Not practising the saxophone more when I was younger. My five-year plan ... To provide a platform for talented jazz musicians to release music.

What's the point? Modern life is about the realisation of the constant battle between good and evil, the choice between selfishness and selflessness, yin or yang, heads or tails. If we side with negativity then we have to be ready to live (or die) with the consequences. My life in six words ... Music reflects life / Life reflects music. A life in brief Born in west London in March 1964, the saxophonist Courtney Pine CBE is known for integrating modern styles, including drum'n'bass and UK garage, with contemporary jazz. Pine lives in London with his wife, Dr Jeune Guishard-Pine, and their four children. He will perform at Ronnie Scott's in London on 14 August as part of the Brit Jazz Festival.

Visit ronniescotts.co.uk for details More about: LondonJazz: Preview / Interview: Courtney Pine - House of Legends at the Jazz Cafe, Camden, Feb 7-8 Preview / Interview: Courtney Pine - House of Legends at the Jazz Cafe, Camden, Feb 7-8 Saxophonist Courtney Pine CBE talked to Alison Bentley about bringing Caribbean-influenced jazz from his latest House of Legends album to Camden’s Jazz Cafe, Feb. 7th and 8th. Alison Bentley: I heard you talk last year about learning on the bandstand with Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. The first time I heard you play was with the Jazz Warriors at the old Bracknell Jazz Festival. Are there still opportunities like that for young jazz musicians to learn on the bandstand? Courtney Pine: That was in the 80s, right? I remember that one really well. I'm about to launch another band called the Venus Warriors, an all-female band. And it's a version of the Jazz Warriors. I'm having to recount the story of this first show all the time. The musicians were scared of doing that gig. I remember that show, cause there was a great trumpet player called Harry Beckett.

He didn't really want to do it. He's like, 'I don't really want to be with these young kids.' And I'm like, 'You're not going to have any pressure, we'll play your music.' I just remember going through this whole thing of convincing my elders, that this would be a good idea. And I'm going though it again with these women. AB: You're setting up new opportunities. CP: It's hard, but I've been doing the best I can. The guys who have come through, like Soweto Kinch, Shabaka Hutchings, they're all award winners, so the process does work. In terms of me, I just had to go and find it, I had to go and search. But I'm doing the opposite now, I'm going looking for youngsters who want to play, and even though I've told you because you asked me, I don't actually go out and make a big noise about it. But I think it's such a strong component of our industry that we inspire the young and give them a platform to play. I've a record label that does it now as well.

There's a band called Empirical that released their début that won Album of the Year. AB: You produced that one? CP: Yes, I did, but they've had three other records out on another label. They've gone on to bigger and better things, and that's the idea, that the elders give them the opportunity to stand up. AB: Is the emphasis on elders training younger people a part of the Caribbean tradition? CP: I think so, yeah. If you look at Caribbean Music, it's all about communication and functionality. You can't really play grooves or scales or sounds that aren't relevant to your village, your town, your nation. It just doesn't work. You find that the music that comes from the Caribbean is from the essence of the community. That's what I've tried to do over the years. I've done my apprenticeship playing American jazz, playing classical music, using different approaches to become a better musician. When you start to play from the community aspect, you get a different feel, a different sound, a different kind of demarcation. We started this conversation talking about the Jazz Warriors, which is what that band was all about, a community-based band.

I was lucky enough to play with Manu Dibango, a Cameroonian saxophonist who's a spokesman in France. He has a political show. He plays great saxophone, and he inspired me. I did a show with him last year, and the reasons why he plays music are what I want to do as well- to inspire others. AB: I was thinking, the Caribbean islands are so close to each other other but their sounds and styles are so different. Is that because the music's associated with individual towns and communities? CP: Very much so. That's made my day you saying that, because a lot of people think that the Caribbean is all Calypso or Bob Marley. It's not. When you think about Cuba and Martinique, and everything in between- there's a lot of variation. And for me what's inspiring is the fact that these Africans have taken their locality and they've developed something. It's like a scientist saying, 'What can I make out of this thing? What can I make out of these instruments? We can make this style!' One of the styles of music is Mento.

If you go on YouTube and look at Mento, there's a guy playing what looks like a cheese grater- and it is! It's what they use to grate the coconut. He's scraping it with some piece of metal. And they put some beads in there, cover both ends, and it's like a shaker. That's what I mean about using your environment to make a new style of music that's particularly relevant to your community. AB: Is it a personal thing, going back to your musical roots? CP: Yeah, cause the first album I ever heard was Ska. My parents, when they came over in the 60s, had a one-bedroom apartment in Paddington, and I can remember holding on to the side of the speaker and hearing this music. As I got a bit older I listened to the B-sides- they were instrumental versions, and I found out later that these guys were jazz musicians, doing jazz tunes, jazz sets in a hotel in the night. And then during the day the producer, Coxsone or Duke Reid, would call them to make this music and they would get a chance to play some jazz for the B-sides of these Ska records.

They feature some great musicians: there's one still living to this day- Ernest Ranglin, the guitarist. He arranged My Boy Lollipop and he produced it. He's a great musician, a legend, and fortunately he's still alive so we can still appreciate him. He was around during those days, so I was bitten by the bug back then. AB: There’s one track on the album called Kingstonian Swing- is there a connection between swing and Ska and Mento music, would you say? CP: I think so. I've always felt it. But when I started doing my research I realised that a lot of the musicians from the Caribbean actually ended up in New Orleans. There's a guy called Jelly Roll Morton, one of the pioneers of jazz. His mother was from Haiti and he always talked about Haitian music. I've always thought listening to early jazz music that there was something Caribbean in there. And my research justified it. The track Kingstonian Swing actually segues from a tribute to Stephen Lawrence. His mum buried his body in Jamaica. And if you go to Kingston, there's tempo, speed, pace- there's a certain energy that you get in Kingston, and I tried to capture that on this particular track.

AB: It's got loads of energy. It really made me want to dance. CP: The whole album made me want to dance. This is the first time I've done a project where I couldn't keep still! Most of my other records were done in the studio. Everything is quite precise- scored and written down. This one- the band just had me on my feet all the time. AB: You've chosen to stick with the soprano on this album- any particular reason? CP: Several. I like to challenge myself. Is it possible to do a whole show on soprano saxophone? It may seem a simple question but in practice it's not that easy. When you play other instruments you get variations of sounds and range. But it kind of reminds me of the Caribbean. When you think of the great cricket teams of the 70s that Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd led, and how they had so little, but they did so much to inspire and dominate the world in cricket. They didn't have a huge County cricket team like England but they were able to inspire the world. That to me is the Caribbean. For the most part there's a term: Third World.

If you've been to the Caribbean- I'm not just talking about holidaymakers -if you've lived in the Caribbean for a period of time, you'll find that there's so much there and it really is about people and the community spirit. The way they interface with their surroundings and survive with so little. I find it hard to call it the Third World- I've been to places far worse. But it terms of playing the soprano, I'm choosing the smallest instrument I could find to lead an album. It made sense to me. AB: It has such a clear, powerful, high sound. CP: Yeah, it's like a a female voice. It's a soprano voice, but it's a limited range. My previous album [Europa] was a bass clarinet album which had a 7-octave range. This has a 2 1/2 octave range. It's harder to play, but for me it can cut through, cut above- if you practise, which I need to do! AB: Are there any particular soprano players who've inspired you over the years?

CP: In no order at all: Branford Marsalis, Waye Shorter, Grover Washington Jr., Ronnie Laws, Steve Lacy, John Coltrane and the master of it all, Sidney Bechet. The instrument really is a difficult instrument to play and they've found a way to give it a positive voice. AB One particular thing I've heard you say- that you feel your real instrument is the human body? CP: Yeah, I find that before you can make the choice to make a sound on an instrument, you hear the sound in your head. You have a concept of what you want to do with the sound, rhythmically, harmonically, spiritually. It's created in your brain first, and you pick up the nearest thing- a stone, or a block of wood or a piece of metal, it doesn't matter. My favourite musicians are the ones when you go to see them perform, the instrument disappears when they're playing. Like Hugh Masekela or Fela [Kuti]- it's not really about the technical expertise. For some reason the instrument stops being what it looks like. The saxophone stops sounding like a saxophone, but sounds like a human voice.

AB: Your own music always sounds really uncompromising but you always manage to take the audience with you. How do you manage to do both those things? CP: It's an interesting thing. I remember the first time I played at the Royal Festival Hall and gave a shout to the guys on the back bench. And a critic actually said I shouldn't have done that. Basically I used to be on that back bench. I was there with the cheap tickets, so I know what it's like. My hero Sonny Rollins- I couldn't afford to see him play for years. I know what it's like to go to a concert and to be squeezed up at the back. I'm not an artist who looks for the VIP lounge. When I'm onstage I know what it's like. I know when you're yawning; I know what's going on. So I've found ways of keeping myself excited in music and then trying to translate it to the bandstand. In the 80s I was doing what I call an apprenticeship, and I was playing American Jazz Standards. You play these songs and people say, 'Oh, he's not bad.

But he's not as good as Charlie Parker.' I noticed every tune had a bass solo and people were yawning! I was yawning as well. And I'd go back to the hotel room and I'd be listening to some Goldie. I thought, 'There's something wrong here, I've got to make an adjustment.' So I started doing more of the music that I was listening to when I went to parties. AB: Urban music? CP: Yeah. The kind of music- if you go to a late night club- those kinds of sounds. And that might be as simple as incorporating a drum pattern or a bass line, or a song- a Bob Marley piece. And I noticed that would make the audience's eyes sparkle. I guess I've been on that path since. There's no point in going on stage and still doing an apprenticeship, or playing background music. People have paid a lot of money to see you perform- you have to give them something. So my remit is to do something I haven't done before. Alison Bentley: The gigs at the Jazz Cafe- what can we expect?

Courtney Pine: We're into the second year of doing the House of Legends project, and I was surprised because I didn't think it would be received so well. The project makes me smile every time I get on the bandstand. It's everything about me and my culture. It's different every night, and I just love playing this music. There are some stiff-upper-lip kind of venues that I have done and I'm looking forward to presenting this music at the Jazz Cafe. It's an open space and Camden Town is very cosmopolitan. I'm expecting a really good time. As a Londoner I know what Camden is like, and this music is ideal for it. It is Caribbean-based, but it is more than that- it is jazz. Drums / Dube – Robert Fordjour

Question: What musical instrument does jazz musician Courtney Pine primarily play?
Answer: SAXOPHONE