Jazz Reviews : Courtney Pine Cuts Loose on the Tenor Sax

Courtney Pine, just weeks short of his 26th birthday, is the first indisputable jazz phenomenon of the 1990s.

On the first night of his current American tour, opening to a full house Tuesday at Catalina’s, the British tenor saxophonist did not wait a single minute before confirming what his records have proved: that his improvisational facility is boundless, his energy incredible and his creativity unique.

Opening with a steeplechase treatment of “What Is This Thing Called Love,” he built tension upon tension over at least a dozen choruses, to the verge of hysteria. He has a manner of repeating a phrase against shifting accents, then moving into endless flurries of notes, but occasionally he offers contrast, typically by devoting the entire bridge of one chorus to two long-held notes, then back to the basic frenzy.

The crowd reacted to this torrent of tones as if watching a gymnast walking, at top speed, on a tightrope stretched across the entire Atlantic Ocean. Urged on by Cyrus Chestnut’s fleet piano, Ralph Peterson’s disciplined drumming and the astonishing bass work of 22-year-old Charnett Moffett, Pine kept up the pace with a soprano sax treatment of “Donna Lee,” then reverted to tenor for “Misty,” which led to a five-minute closing cadenza marked by honks, exercises and split tones.

If Pine’s musical shock therapy leans at times toward excess, it could be the consequence of youthful intrepidity, or perhaps a desire to show us that he did indeed practice eight hours a day to develop this technique. Were he to rein in his resources a little more diligently, nothing would be lost; both he and his listeners might have more of a chance to breathe.

Nevertheless, he is by any yardstick an astonishing artist, and certainly the first British horn player in the history of jazz who seems destined to make a full-scale international impact. He closes Saturday.