Courtney Pine

Born in London in 1964 to a family of Jamaican origin, Courtney Pine first trained on the clarinet before teaching himself the saxophone as a teenager. His trajectory began in reggae, including a tour with Clint Eastwood & General Saint in 1981, and he became prominent in mid-1980s British jazz, notably by founding the Jazz Warriors in 1985, a large Black British ensemble that emerged from the London scene. Pine drew wider attention with Journey to the Urge Within in 1986, and subsequently developed a discography in which acoustic jazz converses with hard bop, Caribbean music, soul and, later, influences from drum and bass and UK garage. A leading saxophonist, he also plays flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, the latter being central on Europa (2011). Milestones in his career also include Modern Day Jazz Stories (1995), Underground (1997), Back in the Day (2000), Transition in Tradition: En Hommage a Sidney Bechet (2009), Black Notes from the Deep (2017) and Spirituality (2022). Through his bands and collective projects, Courtney Pine has held a continuous place in the evolution of contemporary British jazz since the 1980s.