House Of Legends (2012)

"For this lively merengue, ska, mento and calypso project, Courtney Pine has returned to the soprano saxophone and picked a band steeped in Afro-Caribbean music – including the French/Martinique pianist Mario Canonge, the Trinidadian steel-pan player Annise Hadeed and Jazz Jamaica drummer Rod Youngs. Though a party mood prevails on Kingstonian Swing and the Sonny Rollins-like calypsos Liamuiga (Cook Up) and House of Hutch, Pine opens the album with a trilling soprano-sax ballad in memory of Stephen Lawrence, and there are also tributes to executed rebel slave Samuel Sharpe, and to Nelson Mandela. Pine is on scalding improvisational form, wailing in blazing double-time lines, whistling high-register effects and fizzing exchanges with Hadeed and the veteran trumpeter Eddie "Tan Tan" Thornton. It has its predictable moments, but fans and newcomers will welcome this engagingly delivered repertoire." (John Fordham, The Guardian)|