When Song: The Ballad Book appeared last year it was as tender as the night.
A clear step change for Courtney Pine, he picked up yet another MOBO jazz act nomination for his troubles and performed on the same stage when awards time came around joining soul singers Mica Paris and Omar among the line-up at the jazz, soul and gospel night that the organisers had put on in west London ahead of the main awards.
Completely different to 2012’s rousing Caribbean-themed House of Legends, Song had a little more in common with 2011’s Europa and Pine is still touring the album more than a year on from release with dates this spring including this Belfast appearance. Most of all the project showcases Courtney Pine’s bass clarinet-playing in duo with pianist Zoe Rahman.
Still the UK’s most famous jazz musician for all the right reasons – no not celebrity, he was on the moving BBC late-1990s ‘Perfect Day' video for instance (remember the wail of his soprano sax cutting like a rapier?) not at all because of the nod from the Queen who made him a CBE, one step short of a knighthood, most recently, but because of Pine’s sheer staggering musicianship and his huge influence on a generation of under represented new young BAME musicians to follow his jazz calling, like a young Jason Yarde who saw him in ambassadorial mode on TV, because the ex-Jazz Warriors star is above all else a charismatic figure like a lead singer who in his case just makes you want to like and love to play jazz whoever you are.
His sixteenth studio album, one of his most intimate in a long career at the top, recorded in his home town of London over two days of late-November 2014 and his first all-ballads affair, Song opened amid expansive chords with Sam Rivers’ ‘Beatrice’ followed by a warm version of Thad Jones’ ‘A Child is Born’ and the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ roughed up like a sea storm to begin with before the famous melody is relayed so very sensitively.
A 1990s soul direction an area Pine is also very much at home in takes hold later with the Brian McKnight song ‘One Last Cry’ performed quite straight, drawing out the melody with a minimum of artifice dependent on Pine’s extraordinary interpretative resource. ‘B Intro,’ a brief Pine solo improv, acts as a sonic sorbet before the rendition of the perennially popular ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,’ with the sentimental David Foster-penned 1980s hit for Chaka Khan from I Feel For You, ‘Through the Fire,’ another gem. Hearing what Pine can do with this weepie on a bass clarinet is remarkable; on tenor sax if he ever plays the song it could be a showstopper.
Pine’s own composition the title track ‘Song,’ (the melody hinting obliquely at ‘A Nightingale...’) and then the most meaningful choice of the whole collection, a version of Donny Hathaway’s truly inspirational 1970s anthem ‘Someday We’ll All Be Free,’ Pine showing his power and control, complete the album.
Zoe Rahman sounds like no other pianist on the UK jazz scene and she sparkles here mainly as an accompanist but also when she finds space of her own to explore.
Stephen Graham
Pine and Rahman play the Black Box on Hill Street, Belfast on 5 May, part of the CQAF