Cheltenham Jazz Festival: Courtney Pine – A Modern Day Jazz Story - @ Cheltenham Town Hall - May 3

Courtney Pine, (tenor and soprano sax); Robert Mitchell (piano); Rio Kai (bass); Romana Campbell (drums)

Back in the day Fleet Street newspapers used to keep a jazz critic on staff. Their main duties were to live a troglodyte existence in the bowels of the print room and wait for the next wave of British Jazz to appear, like desert flowers that only bloom every 20 years. In the mid-eighties these critics lumbered into action as Loose Tubes and the Jazz Warriors appeared, along with some outliers in the colonies, such as Andy Sheppard in Bristol. Many who came out of that particular scene are still with us but the one that has remained the most prominent is Courtney Pine and he’s out again for another run around the festivals. A Sunday in May brought him, Robert Mitchell and a young bass and drums pairing to Cheltenham’s Town Hall.

While Pine attends to lighting his incense the others warm up with a roll on the drums, a bowed bass and conjuring drones from the inside of the piano before he leads off on soprano with a swirling, eastern tinged line. As his solo begins the band dig in behind him and we achieve lift. There is a palpable mood of joy in the room. The solo is full of frantic rocking over an R’n’B groove, solid bass and shuffling drums. Sacrifice kicks it up a notch with a hammering piano solo, Pine roars in for a short solo, exchanging phrases with the bass and Kai’s bouncing, dancing solo. Pine’s heavyweight blowing owes a lot to Coltrane as he screams up into the higher reaches and swoops down to close.

Kai takes us into For Our Forefathers’ Forefathers with a bass solo full, of pep, bounce and fire; Pine’s solo begins with short, exploratory phrases before longer lines and flurries of notes; repeating the shorter phrases sets him up for longer explorations before the band roll into something Caribbean with a big sound on the tenor, Mitchell’s pounding solo with a percussive left hand and dancing right, pushed along by swamp deep bass whilst the drummer, brisk and energetic, adds drama. The piano notes tumble down but the bass digs in even more as Pine blazes back in, all the voices on the tenor, high and low and everything in between, Campbell’s drumming matches him for energy levels.

Another R’n’B stomper follows with short phrases on the sax stitched together to make a greater whole; Pine, on soprano takes flies through a torrent of notes then it’s short solos for all with Pine duelling with first, the drummer, then piano and back again, matching each other blow for blow. Jumping African rhythms lead into a lovely groove over which Pine floats some short punchy soprano and longer phrases before a deep voiced bowed and scratched out bass solo. The spluttering soprano develops into loud chimes, singing out.

The Incense Song opens with backgrounds effects and eastern, Arabic notes weighed down by the low tenor and the bowed bass that flows into some high stepping funk for the feet. The Arabic undercurrent is echoed in the closing of the Pine’s solo, bringing the tune full circle. Next up, we’re back with the Caribbean grooves. It’s carnivalesque with Mitchell supplying most of the good cheers, a call out and a greeting which loses a little energy when Pine steps aside, despite Mitchell’s efforts and the thunderous bass all leading to a celebratory sign-off. The closer is a slice of rollicking muscular swinging uptown call and response soul, full of lively, repeated phrases and an invitation from Courtney to only the good looking people in the crowd to sing along. I fill my lungs in anticipation of joining in the choir.

He is a showman, is Mr Pine, resplendent in a long, professorial gown with symmetrical blocks of a red and gold pattern and his long dreads emphasising his every move. He’s been doing this for a while, even in far flung corners of the Empire like Alnwick. He knows how to work a crowd and you cannot dispute that he still has it, whatever it is, and still has ‘it’ by the load. Dave Sayer