Courtney Pine Quartet, Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon, 06/08/2026 (Part of Brecon Jazz Festival)

Courtney Pine – tenor & soprano saxophones, Robert Mitchell – piano, Rio Kai – double bass, Romarna Campbell – drums

The 2026 edition of Brecon Jazz Festival got underway with a typically exuberant performance from saxophonist and composer Courtney Pine at a near capacity Theatr Brycheiniog.

2026 marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of Pine’s landmark debut album “Journey to the Urge Within”, one of the few UK jazz recordings to make the top forty album chart.

Pine is marking this anniversary with a tour in support of the recent double CD career retrospective “Out Of The Ghetto – A Modern Day Jazz Story”. The title of this compilation references both “Children Of The Ghetto”, the single from his debut album, and “Modern Day Jazz Stories”, his 1995 album release for the famous Verve record label. The album was compiled by Pine and journalist and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre, who supplies the album’s typically perceptive liner notes.

Pine’s touring band features pianist Robert Mitchell, a respected jazz artist in his own right with an impressive back catalogue of his own. On double bass is Rio Kai, once he ‘token bloke’ in the otherwise all female band Nerija. The drum chair is occupied by Romarna Campbell, a bandleader in her own right and a player who received great support from Brecon Jazz Club and Festival during her formative years as a musician. She first appeared at Brecon Jazz Festival as a member of pianist Geoff Eales’ trio back in 2016 and it was good to see her back in Brecon tonight as part of such a stellar line-up. The progress that she has made in the intervening years is hugely impressive, and Brecon Jazz can be proud of its part in that journey.

Pine, born in London to Jamaican parents in 1964 played reggae and funk before turning to jazz and becoming one of the founding members of the highly influential Jazz Warriors big band, with whom he released the acclaimed 1987 album “Out Of Many One People”.

Including the current compilation Pine has released a total of twenty solo albums and in purely commercial terms he remains one of the most successful British jazz performers ever. He has been a great populariser of the music and is one of the few contemporary UK jazz musicians that the proverbial ‘man in the street’ could recognise. In jazz terms Pine has enjoyed a high profile career and his work has seen him honoured with an OBE (2000) and a CBE (2009).

Perhaps because of his background in other musics Pine is a crowd pleaser who delights in whipping up his audiences and getting them up on their feet and singing and clapping along. For ‘serious’ jazz fans this can sometimes be seen as being at the expense of the actual musical content.

I’ve seen Pine perform live on several previous occasions and have sometimes been disappointed.

Having said that I’ve also seen him perform some brilliant shows, his closing set at the Mostly Jazz Festival in Birmingham in 2010 with a band including Zoe Rahman got the mix of music and showmanship spot on. Years earlier I remember seeing him play in an orthodox jazz quartet setting fronting a trio of Americans including pianist Geri Allen and drummer Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts and he looked a world class jazz soloist. At the other end of the quality control scale was a dismal cod reggae performance at an earlier Brecon with virtually zero jazz content as I recall.

Another Birmingham performance, this time in the more formal setting of the Town Hall with the Jazz Warriors line up that made the “Afropeans” album, one of his most satisfying recordings of recent years, didn’t quite live up to the promise of the album. This was largely because of an appalling sound mix, and was thus somewhere between these two extremes.

Meanwhile his “House of Legends” show at the 2013 BJF produced some good musical moments but rather too much verbiage and showmanship and was ultimately disappointing.

In 2015 Pine returned to Brecon with ‘Song (The Ballad Book)’, a duo performance that saw Pine specialising on bass clarinet in a duo setting alongside pianist Zoe Rahman. This was the best Courtney Pine performance that I’d seen for some time but still featured rather too much Courtney and not enough Zoe for my liking. The pianist had her moments, but this was still very much Pine’s show rather than a true meeting of musical equals – for this think vibraphonist Gary Burton and pianist Chick Corea or pianist Kenny Barron and bassist Dave Holland.

I had high hopes for tonight, my first Courtney Pine show for a number of years and one which saw him returning to the format of the orthodox jazz quartet in the company of a group of musicians whose playing I have very much enjoyed hearing elsewhere. Both Mitchell and Campbell have been covered extensively as leader elsewhere on these web pages, including a performance by Campbell and her trio at a Music Spoken Here event in Worcester in March 2026.

Tonight’s performance at a packed Theatr Brycheiniog saw the trio enter the stage with Kai establishing an arco bass drone as Mitchell rummaged around the interior of the piano and Campbell generated mallet rumbles that sounded like distant thunder. Pine then made the grand entrance, pausing to light an incense burner and to set up an electronically generated tambura like drone that provided the backdrop for the first half of a near thirty minute sequence that commenced with a raga and concluded with “Sacrifice”, a track from Pine’s second album, “Destiny’s Song + The Image of Pursuance” from 1988.

The first part of this sequence saw Pine playing soprano sax, his sound often reminiscent of Indian wind instruments such as the shenai and nadaswaram. His instrument was hooked up with a bug mic, allowing him to prowl the stage at will, a key element with regards to the showmanship aspect of his performances, enabling to play to different sections of the hall, thus increasing the audience’s sense of involvement. As Mitchell seated himself at the keyboard of the venue’s magnificent grand piano and Kai established a pizzicato bass groove Pine embarked on an expansive and incisive soprano solo.  Eventually he handed over to Mitchell, a formidably gifted technician and a consistently dazzling piano soloist with a touch ranging from the delicate to the ferocious, the latter exemplified by his two handed hammering here.

Mitchell’s solo gave Pine the opportunity to switch to tenor sax, announcing his transition to the new instrument with a series of Coltrane like blasts. Kai took the next solo on double bass before Pine got down to some serious tenor sax shredding on the Coltrane inspired “Sacrifice”, still wandering the stage before rounding off this first sequence with an unaccompanied tenor sax cadenza that saw him exploring the instrument’s extreme upper register and also deploying echo effects, combining phenomenal technique and showmanship in almost equal measure.

Pine informed us that this was his sixth time at Brecon Jazz Festival and was quick to big up the Festival and its organisers, and rightly so. He was however less informative when it came to tune titles, so I’m not going to try and second guess what the rest of the pieces were. I’ve got his first two albums on dusty old vinyl in the house somewhere but haven’t listened to them in years. I am however reliably informed that one of the soprano numbers was “Miss-Interpret”, a tune from his 1986 debut “Journey to the Urge Within”.

The next item saw Pine starting out on tenor before reverting to soprano following an extended bowed bass solo from the excellent Kai, which developed into a dialogue with Campbell’s drums, this subsequently punctuated by Mitchell’s piano interjections. Pine then embarked on a swirling, increasingly impassioned soprano sax solo as he continued to pace the stage. Dave Sayers’ review of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival performance earlier in the year by this same line up suggests that this tune may have been “The Unknown Warrior (Song For My Forefathers)” from Pine’s “Modern Day Jazz Stories” album.

Soprano sax and double bass introduced the next piece, with Pine subsequently switching to tenor for a brief diversion into the hard bop classic “Moanin’”, written by pianist Bobby Timmons of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Pine is aware of his place in the jazz tradition and this is a piece that he has often featured in his live performances. Later an expansive Mitchell piano solo again served notice of his technical brilliance and this was followed by an extended, and somewhat relentless, tenor sax and drum battle between Pine and Campbell that recalled John Coltrane and Rashied Ali.

Pine continued to exchange ideas with Campbell on the next piece, with the saxophonist now focussing on soprano. He then entered into similar dialogues with Mitchell at the piano and Kai at the bass, the latter subsequently embarking on an extended double bass solo.

Pine remained on soprano for the next item, which contained a Campbell drum feature, plus further allusions to jazz history, I thought I detected a little tip of the hat to Coltrane’s “Afro Blue” somewhere in there.

That opening tambura like drone returned for the next piece, combining with Kai’s bowed bass and Campbell’s mallet rumbles to underscore Pine’s tenor sax meditations on the atmospheric intro. Once Kai had set up a vigorous pizzicato bass groove it was all hands to the pumps as Pine unleashed a torrential tenor sax solo.

The last number saw Pine moving back to soprano and wheeling out all his favourite crowd pleasing tricks that have been a part of his act for years. There was the call and response thing with the audience singing back his saxophone melody lines and clapping along as he urged everybody in the audience to get to their feet. Most obliged but it was all  far too close to the worlds of showbiz and arena rock for my tastes and I was relieved to be sat far enough away from the stage not to be chided by Courtney for my lack of enthusiasm. I did however rather enjoy the instrumental solos that punctuated all of this, particularly an expansive and highly percussive piano solo from the excellent Mitchell. Pine himself delighted the audience with his double sax blasting a la Roland Kirk, or for prog rock fans David Jackson of Van Der Graaf Generator. He was also featured more extensively on soprano. 

Of course most of the audience lapped this up and there’s no denying that Pine and his highly talented band had got the Festival off to a hugely successful start. Pine is a fearsomely gifted technician and a charismatic front man and the now familiar mix of instrumental virtuosity and unabashed showmanship carried the day here.

Pine’s energy and enthusiasm is highly commendable but his shows can get a bit relentless and the constant instrumental grandstanding leaves little room for light or shade. Tonight’s performance didn’t include anything anywhere near resembling a ballad. Personally I’m also a bit tired of all the showman shtick, but if you come to a Courtney Pine show you know what to expect, and of course most of the audience, many of them first timers, absolutely loved it.

If seeing Pine encourages them to listen further to Mitchell, Kai, Campbell and other British jazz musicians that can only be a good thing. The man’s ability to make jazz digestible to a wider musical public cannot be denied. Don’t take too much notice of a jaded old hack like me.

Apart from the showbiz antics at the end I did actually enjoy this show, which had a lot more genuine jazz content than some of the Pine shows I’ve seen in the past. It’s always a pleasure to see Mitchell play and it’s good to see Pine introducing younger musicians like Kai and Campbell to such big audiences. Playing with a Pine is a prestige gig for both of these artists and it’s great to see them rising to the challenge so convincingly. I’m particularly pleased for Campbell, a musician that this website has supported during her early years as a jazz musician.

Following the show business at the merch stall was predictably busy,  but I was particularly pleased to see that Mitchell was selling a lot of his own recordings and that it wasn’t just the flamboyant Pine that caught the attention of the audience.