Courtney PINE - Modern Day Jazz Stories 1995

Courtney PINE - Modern Day Jazz Stories 1995

Jazz

Born on March 18th 1964, this British jazz musician has gone on to become a multi-instrumentalist known for his playing of the saxophone, flute and keyboards. Throughout Pine’s career he has incorporated world music, hip-hop, garage music and classical sounds into his own compositions. In October 2007, he led his Jazz Warriors group in a presentation called “Afropeans”. This multi-disciplinary performance marked the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

Courtney Pine began his musical odyssey by learning the clarinet in school. He soon moved on to the instrument that he has become most associated with, the saxophone. At the age of 23 he released his first album Journey to the Urge Within. It shot up the music charts and went silver, an unprecedented debut. A year later, his follow-up record Destiny’s Song confirmed Pine as a leading figure in the British jazz scene.

In 1989, the composer crossed the Atlantic to record The Vision’s Tale, an album that was again produced by Delfeayo Marsalis. In 1990, Pine decided to explore his personal and musical origins by going to Jamaica to record Closer to Home. Imbued by reggae rhythms, this fourth album was directed by Gussie Clarke and released on the Island Records Mango label. It reached number 14 in the American Billboard charts in 1992.

After a couple more record releases for Island Records, Pine moved to PolyGram to record his seventh record Modern Day Jazz Stories. This 1996 release included a collaboration with singer Cassandra Wilson and it received widespread critical praise. It was one of the reasons that Pine won two MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards in England for “Best Jazz Act” (1996-97). His 2000 release Back in the Day was marked by the stunning vocals of Beverley Knight, Lynden David Hall and Kele Le Roc.

Pine’s own voice came to prominence around that period. Not as a singer but a presenter and TV broadcaster. Pine’s engagement at the side of musicians less fortunate than him also came to the fore thanks to films like his documentary on South African artists whose lives had been destroyed by the apartheid regime. More recently, the 43-year-old composed and performed the soundtrack for a landmark BBC documentary “Mandela – A Living Legend”, underlying his long-term engagement with the Rainbow Nation. Pine has also been involved in workshop tours and an educational film for children. In 2000 he was awarded a British OBE for his contribution to jazz music and his country’s Black community.
By Daniel Brown.
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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 and 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 issued another award winner with Back in the Day in 2000; it was a modern tribute to the funky soul-jazz and Afro-funk sounds of Gary Bartz, Fela, Manu Dibango, Eddie Harris, Idris Muhammad, and Bernard Purdie, all of whom were a big part 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 on his most satisfying project to date.
By Thom Jurek, All Music Guide.
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Geri Allen- (Piano), (Hammond)),
Courtney Pine- (Flute), (Sax (Soprano), (Sax (Tenor),
Mark Whitfield- (Guitar),
Cassandra Wilson- (Voices),
Eddie Henderson- (Trumpet),
Ronnie Burrage- (Percussion), (Drums),
Charnett Moffett- (Double Bass),
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01. Prelude - The Water Of Life 1:24
02. The 37th Chamber 4:20
03. Don't 'Xplain 4:56
04. Dah Blessing 8:48
05. In The Garden Of Eden (Thinking Inside Of You) 5:58
06. Creation Stepper 10:44
07. After The Damaja 1:10
08. Absolution 7:33
09. Each One (Must) Teach One 3:50
10. The Unknown Warrior (Song For My Forefathers) 6:39  3:40
11. I've Known Rivers 3:39
12. Outro - Guiding Light 1:09
13. Prince Of Peace 8:25
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