COURTNEY Pine does not mime, using backing tracks or employ half-dressed dancers.

“I just get up there and give it some gun,” he told Vibe. “This is the only way we can get the music across to you. There is no other way.”

Pine, the nation’s leading jazz-man with 15 studio albums under his belt in 26 years, is picking up his saxophone, rounding up the band and heading back to The Albany, in Douglas Way, Deptford on May 18.

He said: “I’m getting ready to go out on the road and do battle again, for jazz. In the name of jazz.”

For Pine, the music is all about the audience.

He said: “Thankfully jazz is very truthful music and if you go to see somebody perform and they aren’t up to it then you aren’t going to recommend them.

“Guys like me, who have been doing it since 1987, there’s a reason we keep doing it.

“The only thing left is guys that get up there and play for real.”

He added: “Jazz music is always about the community, it is always about the audience. You know when you get a Japanese meal and you choose which food you want and he chops it and cooks it in front of you? It tastes better because you have that fragrance and essence of the meal.

“Jazz is like that. This is real music. It is so human.

“When people turn up to see me it is because it is a night out and they want to hear some creativity so I strive to give the audience something they have never seen or heard before.

“For me the best shows are the ones where you can see that spark or revelation from one person in the audience.”

Keeping his music fresh and inspired is important to Pine. He recalled a show around 1996 when the audience looked bored and prompted him to change his approach.

He said: “I noticed the audience yawning and I was yawning. I would get back to the hotel room and put on some KRS-One or Buju Banton and I would be dancing around the room and I thought why can’t I incorporate that feeling and emotion into what I do on stage?”

A deal was signed in the US and Pine began working with DJs and other kinds of musicians and influences. The result was Modern Day Jazz Stories, which was one of the Mercury Music Prize’s albums of the year in 1996.

Some fans didn’t take to the new sound immediately, he said, with some walkouts.

“I noticed that the women that stayed were really getting into it and I wasn’t yawning any more.

“The music I’m doing now is braver and bolder about reflecting who I am.”

Still, he said, he was nervous about exploring his Caribbean roots in his music but did so on his latest record House of Legends.

The album was rapturously received by critics and fans.

Pine said: “An album I wasn’t sure about doing because I thought guys wouldn’t understand, and it is the one they really like. You never know in life. You have just got to trust your heart and give it some.”

In 2006, Courtney Pine recorded his only live album to date – at the Albany Theatre. It is a venue he enjoys and feels close to.

He said: “The stage is low and you feel connected to the audience.

“I like the location. It is bang smack in the community. I have cousins in Lewisham and in my summer holidays I spent a lot of time there. I feel at home when I play at The Albany.”

Courtney Pine plays The Albany on Saturday, May 18. Doors open 7.30pm and tickets cost £18 in advance from thealbany.org.uk or 020 8692 4446.