Jazz / Funk, World Fusion, Soul Jazz, Post-Bop, African Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Saxophone Jazz
Anilda Carrasquillo Design, Art Direction
Bruce White Viola
Byron Wallen Trumpet, Soloist, Flugelhorn
Byron Wallin Trumpet, Guest Appearance
Cameron Pierre Guitar (12 String), Guitar Engineer, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Guitar (Synthesizer), Guitar (12 String Electric), Guitar
Carleen Anderson Vocals, Guest Appearance, Vocals (Background)
Chris Jerome Korg Synthesizer, Wurlitzer
Chris Worsey Cello
Courtney Pine Synthesizer, Soundscape, Drum Programming, Producer, Turntables, Sax (Baritone), Clarinet (Bass), Percussion Programming, Electronic Percussion, Shaker, Voices, Sax (Tenor), Keyboards, Sound Manipulation, Sounds, Digital Editing, Tamboura, Tambourine, Programming, Arranger, Electric Saxophone, Mixing, Farfisa Organ, Vocals (Background), Sax (Soprano), Flute (Alto), MIDI Arrangement, Wurlitzer, EWI, Melodica, Tabla, Organ (Hammond)
David McAlmont Vocals (Background), Vocals, Guest Appearance
Dennis Rollins Guest Appearance, Trombone
Everton Nelson String Score, Violin, String Enhancement
Fitzgerald C. Pine Executive Producer
Gary Willis Photography
Giles Broadbent Violin
James Collins String Engineer
Malak I Mixing, Engineer
Peter Martin Bass (Electric), Bass (Acoustic), Bass, Double Bass
Robert Fordjour Drums
Robert Mitchell Piano, Guest Appearance
Shawn Joseph Mastering
Sheema Mukherjee Sitar, Guest Appearance
Steve Reece Piano Engineer
Thomas Dyani Shaker, Talking Drum, Conga, Engineer, Shekere, Percussion, Clay Pot, Caxixi
Yousuf Ali Khan Tabla, Guest Appearance
Devotion is Courtney Pine's ninth album and his first to be released on American shores since 1999. Those familiar with Pine's restlessly adventurous, knife-edge walk between the jazz explorations of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and his love affair with reggae, soul, funk, world pop and folk musics, and electronica will be delighted with this (though maybe not happy that the remixes on the U.K. edition were left off). He has balanced all of his passions and inquiries on a record that leaves in the edges, but makes the puzzle pieces fit. Pine's connection to nightclub and street music is in his DNA; he has been employing it since his 1986 debut, Journey to the Urge Within. On Devotion, the studio becomes a lab. He's not interested in watering down his obsessions to make them fit; he's seeking to pump everything up and have genres rub up against each other. Pine plays electric piano, Hammond organ, saxophones, EWI, clarinets, and flute, as well as programming bass and loops. Also starring are guitarist Cameron Pierre, bassist Peter Martin, drummer Robert Fordjour, and various percussionists, including Thomas Dyani.
From the jump, Pine goes into interstellar overgroove. After a kung fu movie intro wedded to sound effects, he kicks it with "Sister Soul," a blistering funky soul-jazz track that pushes all the right buttons with its low-down swagger and Pierre's eight-string glissando guitars. The title track is uptempo rocker's reggae (which bleeds well into the ska zone), on which Pine plays baritone saxophones and bass clarinet. He makes the dread beat dance with jazz dissonance and harmonics; the groove is deep, dirty, and lusty. In his solo, Pine honks like a bar walker and steams like Archie Shepp circa 1969, but it's all him. Other notables include the post-bop jazz meets Afro-funk of "Osibisa," a tribute to the pioneering African band of the same name from the 1970s, and the shimmering East Indian groove of "Translusance," with guest sitarist Sheema Mukherjee from Transglobal Underground and tabla star Yousuf Ali Khan. When Pine and Mukherjee trade fours and play harmonic counterpoint, the effect is dazzling. Other killer cuts include the stomping instrumental northern soul strut of "U.K." and the snake-hipped, finger-popping, scratchadelic groove jazz of "Everything Is Everything." There are also a couple of fine vocal numbers. First there is a beautiful cover of John Martyn's "Bless the Weather" with David McAlmont of McAlmont & Butler singing; later comes the Will Jennings/Joe Sample nugget "When the World Turns Blue," with Carleen Anderson of the Young Disciples. Ultimately, Devotion is the work of a mature and restless jazz master who understands how to get exactly what he wants out of a record, and is not interested in jazz as a separate entity or a rarefied, elitist tradition, but as a living, breathing, evolving argument that embraces difference as part of its mission to look deeply and interpret musical forms through its own kaleidoscopic lens. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Courtney Pine
Active Decades: '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Mar 18, 1964 in London, England
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Funk, World Fusion, Soul Jazz, Post-Bop, African Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Saxophone Jazz
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.
---Thom Jurek, All Music Guide |
