His fusion of traditional, driving jazz and modern jungle, reggae, hip hop beats and DJs' scratches may have incurred the wrath of jazz purists, grumbling at the sight of turntables between drum-kit and double bass, but British saxophonist Courtney Pine has attracted a new and younger breed of jazz fan. Some traditionalists even describe him as a pop musician. Pine warms to this "criticism".
"That makes me quite happy," he says, "because it shows that what I am doing is quite different. I've never really pleased jazz critics anyway so for me to find my own voice, and the way the critics walk out of concerts because they see the turntables, shows me that I am doing the right thing."
The telephone conversation has just begun and Pine puts me on hold, complaining that he has to endure a dreadful Whitney Houston pan-pipe opus while British Gas holds him on another line. He's just back from a concert with a rave band in Romania - a gig he did simply because he has "always wanted to do a concert with people standing up and not sitting down, expecting a suit-and-tie type thing like at a jazz club". Suddenly he outlines his mission to teach those ignorant of the power of jazz.
"I try to appeal to as diverse an audience as possible because when I got into jazz there was nothing out there that I could get my teeth into. But there was something about jazz music; it was more emotional, more soulful, deeper and more rootsy. It just had more of everything. I wanted to bring it to everyday people and that's what I am doing now."
Pine's appearance at this year's Cork Jazz and Belfast Festivals is testament to the 35-year-old Londoner's appeal to a legion of younger jazz fans. It is also indicative of the direction the Cork weekend is heading. Last year, Pine's innovative brand of jazz bridged the gap between the more orthodox line-up at the Metropole and the acid jazz strains emanating from the G-Club Mix at the Cork Opera House.
Pine, however, still has bad memories of Cork, not just because of the storm he flew into last year which delayed his concert for three hours, but because of the cold reception he received when he first played the festival in the 1980s. It even contributed to the search for his own voice, turning his back on the conventional straight-ahead style of playing.
"Guys were walking out and covering their ears," he says. "It was just horrendous. That was one of the factors telling me I should be playing for people my own age. Now I can play with people my own age who can understand what I am trying to do. I am really looking forward to playing there. It was a place that I didn't ever want to see again."
Pine's attraction is in his imaginative distillation of several modern musical genres - hip-hop, reggae, jungle and jazz - creating an inebriating concoction that is distinctly his own. His music can claim African, European and West Indian influences. But it is the consummate ease with which he blends drum'n'bass and scratching with crisp torrents of tenor sax that impresses most. Yet, despite his ability to place jazz in a 1990s context, Pine's playing still encapsulates flavours of his heroes - John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. His circular breathing method, reminiscent of Coltrane, allows Pine to dive deep into flowing lines of improvisation surfacing only occasionally for air. Indeed his accomplished playing coupled with the success of his 1987 debut album, Journey to the Urge Within, which sold 100,000 copies, established this young black musician as a marketable artist in the late 1980s. In his earlier albums Pine adhered to straight-ahead acoustic jazz, covering reliable standards and even dabbling in some reggae, Indian and African in later recordings.
On his 1996 Modern Day Jazz Stories he deviated from the jazz norm further and included contributions from DJ Pogo and Sparki, both from the British hip hop scene, thereby creating his unique sound. He continues to be influenced by the hip-hop movement.
"I have always been into computer technology, and then on Modern Day Jazz Stories I utilised it as another member of the band so the compositions are based around the computer," he says. "The beats are more to the front. As well as it being traditional it is just a bit more modern in the mixture of beats and the approach to it. I use a computer like a drum - we turn it on and all jam to it."
But traditionalists argue that the modern beats suppress his accomplished sax playing. He puts their obstruction down to a generation's cycle of music. "When they first got into jazz, what they were doing and listening to was radical as well - Acker Bilk, Louis Armstrong or Sonny Rollins. Whatever period of jazz you got into, it was something that was very risky and that is happening again now. Musicians are using computers and technology and performing with DJs. This change will always happen. Some critics feel they have to be the resistance to a jazz musician's output . . . it's revolution and evolution."
For an artist who sells, on average, 40,000 copies of each album, Pine has crossed over into the mainstream but his hybrid jazz remains too disparate for purists. He is at the forefront of a new genre of groundbreaking and anti-establishment artists; he has worked with Mercury Award Winner Talvin Singh and encouraged Mercury nominee and fellow saxophonist, Denys Baptiste. "We are all going in the same direction and we know we have to play for our generation and play for our people."
But he has indulged fully in the far side too, performing with the likes of Mick Jagger, Kate Bush and Madonna. Pine admits it is interesting to see how pop is done and promoted. Always eager to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, he longs for his ultimate goal - a number one jazz album. Perhaps some Whitney Houston covers? He laughs. "That's maybe too much of a crossover."
Courtney Pine will be performing at the Cork Jazz Festival today at the Everyman Palace at 8.30 p.m. , and at the Belfast Festival at the Mandela Hall in Queen's University on Friday, November 5th at 9.30 p.m.
