Midhurst Jazz, Food & Blues Festival

Courtney Pine offers musical reflections on four decades in the business as he lines up a date for the new Midhurst Jazz, Food & Blues Festival.

He will be offering Courtney Pine: Out Of The Ghetto, A Modern Day Jazz Story 1986-2026 on Sunday, November 22 at 8pm at Midhurst Rother College, GU29 9DT, with tickets available on https://tickets.midhurstjazzandblues.com/events/midhurstjazzfestival/2291631

From his landmark debut Journey to the Urge Within to his Mercury-nominated Modern Day Jazz Stories and deeply personal House of Legends project, Courtney has consistently redefined what it means to be a jazz artist in the UK. In a big anniversary year for him personally, he will looking back on it all – and is especially delighted to be doing so at a new festival.

“Usually with a festival there is a certain level of requirement in terms of sponsors and venues, and if the towns are compliant to have a musical experience in this way then it's just brilliant when you can get people together and enjoy music. And with a new festival, I always wonder if they know what is going to happen! I don't know if they know that I like to do jazz dives and certain things on stage! When you do a festival that has a certain reputation, people know what to expect but I like to bring something that can be a little bit dangerous! I need to do something a little bit different. I don't want to do what other people do. I tend to overplay. I tend to play for too long and end up with someone on the side of the stage saying ‘Come on, cut it short in ten minutes!’ And I really love to play for audiences that don't know what jazz could be. I get people from 14 years to 88 years, and they are all together.”

As for the big anniversary year this year, Courtney dates it from the release of Journey to the Urge Within: “I didn't expect it. When I first started recording as a solo artist, it was not the thing to have jazz artists from the UK doing that. We were all session men. I'd been playing in other bands. I'd been playing in reggae bands and drum bands but the album just seemed the natural next step. I couldn't understand why you couldn't do it! But actually a couple of elements came together, one of those being Island Records and their enthusiasm. There were a few record companies that were interested in signing me but they wanted me to play smooth jazz. I wanted to play straight-ahead jazz that could compete with Top of the Pops and could compete with Madonna. I didn't see why jazz couldn't do those things. I wanted to play at Glastonbury and so I did and now jazz artists play at Glastonbury and it's just no big deal.”

And Courtney has just kept on going: “I still have seven more albums in my head now, all costed and cast. That's the way I work. I've always had future projects in mind. Maybe that's why it's never been boring. It has always been deep. Whenever I think that jazz has reached the corner, there is always something else around that corner. When I learn a new scale or a new chord, then it just opens up doors, and that's still happening.

“I just wish I'd done more in the past. There were certain people that I really wanted to speak to but was too nervous to ask questions of backstage. And I wasn’t really that good at business. All I wanted to do was play music so there was a lot of naivety that went into everything in those early days.

“But I just decided early on that I wanted to do what I loved, and there is kind of apprenticeship that goes with that when you're learning about people like Sidney Bechet and Billie Holiday and Dexter Gordon. And then you realise that you get so much more by talking to the people that knew them and that worked with them. All the jazz musicians that I have met have been so open and encouraging because their role is that they need youngsters to prolong the process of what jazz music is – especially going from England to America and meeting some of the elders who are just so proud of what they did and how what they did has borne fruit. With jazz it's a never-ending constant exploration of yourself and of music.”