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Courtney Pine

Background information
Born March 18, 1964 (1964-03-18) (age 44)
London, England, UK
Genre(s) Jazz, Hip-hop, Reggae, Dance music
Instrument(s) Saxophones (primary)
Clarinet, Flute, Keyboards
Associated acts Jazz Warriors

Courtney Pine (born 18 March 1964) is a British saxophonist and composer. A founding member of Britain's Jazz Warriors in the mid 1980s, Pine has lent his saxophone playing to a variety of musical disciplines, including the hip-hop, reggae, dance and funk music mediums.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Courtney Pine was born on March 18, 1964 in London, England, United Kingdom. Born of Jamaican-born factory workers, Pine grew up in a bedsit near Paddington in West London. He started out on clarinet and later took up the tenor saxophone (playing with reggae and funk bands while attending school).

[edit] Jazz Warriors

Main article: Jazz Warriors

In 1985 Pine formed the Jazz Warriors with fellow musicians Gail Thompson, Steve Williamson, Cleveland Watkiss, Julian Joseph, Adrian Reid, Philip Bent, Mark Mondesir and Gary Crosby. Each member of West Indian parentage, the big band formed as a rival to the then all-white big band Loose Tubes. As Andrew Blake writes, the Jazz Warriors adopted "both musical and ideological stances from the radical black American jazz of the 1960s (the music of Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and others, and the politics of the Afrocentric Chicago-based grouping the Association for the Advancement of Creative Movement)."[2]

[edit] Solo career

Performing at a Brixton pub not long after the Brixton riots of 1985, Pine got his break after being interviewed by Time Out (being offered seven separate record deals). He settled with Island Records, a label that did not offer much financial reward but did permit him artistic freedom. His debut album of 1986, Journey to The Urge Within, made the UK Top Forty and attained silver disc status. Despite his success, he nearly had to declare bankruptcy for his failure to "correctly anticipate his tax bill."[3]

[edit] Criticism

Richard Ingham, author of The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone, has drawn a comparison of Pine with American Branford Marsalis, writing that:

Courtney Pine, like Branford Marsalis, comes from a jazz performing background: his work in the rock field is radically different, and as much a contribution to the 1990s as Marsalis's was to the 1980s. Similarly to many players of his generation and younger, he was actually brought up listening to pop and rock music, learning jazz at a later stage. He has made many forays into soul, reggae, hip-hop and dance (rave) music.[4]

[edit] Awards

  • 2000 OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) - In January of 2000 Pine received the distinction of OBE for his contributions to jazz music.[5]

[edit] Discography

  • Resistance (2005)
  • Devotion (2003)
  • Back in the Day (2000)
  • Underground (1997)
  • Modern Day Jazz Stories (1995)
  • The Eyes of Creation (1992)
  • Within The Realms of Our Dreams (1991)
  • Closer To Home (1990)
  • The Vision's Tale (1989)
  • Angel Heart OST (1987)
  • Destiny's Song (1988)
  • Journey to The Urge Within (1986)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Ingham, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone, 151. 
  2. ^ Nava, Mica; O'Shea, Alan. Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, 222. 
  3. ^ Anstead, Mark (2002). When they put a hefty tax on sax appeal. The Guardian.
  4. ^ Ingham, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone, 160. 
  5. ^ Shodimu, Jide. Black Stories Beautiful Summaries, 71. 

[edit] References

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