In London, homegrown talent has been on the upswing, with the best and brightest players…
This legendary club has been operating without interruption for 60 years. It opened in late October 1959, when tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott, inspired by trips to jazz clubs in New York City, and his business partner, fellow sax man Peter King, opened Ronnie Scott’s at 39 Gerard Street, in Soho. The debut act was a quartet led by British saxophonist Tubby Hayes. In 1965, the club moved a few blocks north to its current location, and the following year expanded into the space next-door.
The club is healthy as ever. “Open and busy seven nights a week,” says Simon Cooke, the club’s managing director. “A lot of tourists are frustrated, as we can be booked out quite a few weeks ahead, especially on weekends.”
The roll call of musicians who’ve played Ronnie Scott’s is legion — Count Basie, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz and scores more in the early days; Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea and other big names in later years. Pop stars such as Prince, Curtis Mayfield and Jimi Hendrix (who did his last public show there) have also found their way onto the club’s stage.
Scott and King played a significant role in opening up jazz internationally. In the early ’60s, they challenged the British Musicians Union’s ban on allowing artists from the United States to play British clubs, and helped hammer out an exchange program between the countries. The venue’s first U.S. act was tenor man Zoot Sims, who appeared in November 1961. The floodgates soon opened.
Scott died in 1996. King ran the place until 2005, when he sold it to London impresario Sally Greene. She and partner Michael Watt sunk three million pounds into a massive renovation of a club that Cooke says was “pretty tired.” Today, Ronnie Scott’s retains its classic feel, with sultry lighting, dark woods and red highlights. The main room comfortably holds 216 patrons. Eleven years ago, the venue added the Late Late Show, which starts around 1 a.m., and finds prominent players like Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper regularly stopping by to sit in.
Summing up the enduring influence of London’s legacy club, Cooke says, “Without Ronnie’s, the U.K. scene would have been years behind where it is now.” www.ronniescotts.co.uk
You enter through a small, weathered brick archway and downstairs awaits one of London’s most revered and longstanding jazz clubs, a place that, according to The Independent, “brings to mind jazz’s golden age.” The comparatively roomy stage is low to the ground, inviting a close connection between performer and audience. The 606 Club has been a bustling nexus of British jazz since musician Steve Rubie took over in 1976. For years, he’s presented live music seven nights a week.
In the early days, Rubie instituted a policy of hiring only British acts. Other major clubs were “regularly booking overseas musicians,” he recalls, “and that meant opportunities for U.K.-based musicians were more restricted. I felt, particularly as we had developed into the local musicians’ after-hours hang, that we should focus more on providing a base for local talent.”
The policy has loosened over the years, and 606 regularly books American acts like Jerry Bergonzi, Peter Bernstein, Sheryl Bailey and Howard Alden. However, the calendar is more apt to be populated by such British artists as saxophonist Tony Kofi, pianist David Rees-Williams and singers Dana Gillespie and Ian Shaw.
The 606 Club has a fairly involved membership program, but non-members are welcome so long as they sit for a “substantial meal.” A music charge of 10 to 14 pounds, which goes straight to the band, is added to the tab.
Artists who play blues, R&B, Latin and other styles of music are routinely welcomed onto the 606 stage. Freedom from genre strictures has been a characteristic of the London scene since the early ’80s, Rubie says. And the 606 Club has contributed to that egalitarian culture. “I made a point of booking players across the spectrum with the specific idea of getting musicians from different genres to play together,” he says. “It’s fair to say that the club certainly provided a late-night platform for musicians to meet after their gigs and get to play with others they may not have played with otherwise.”
Rubie is bullish on the current London jazz climate: “I personally think that the London scene is second only to New York, which I know well, in its strength and depth of talent.” www.606club.co.uk
For “out jazz” in London, Vortex is the place to go. Iconoclastic English saxophonist Evan Parker is an unofficial artist-in-residence there. The late noise-jazz guitarist Derek Bailey was a regular. More recently, forward-thinking players like Shabaka Hutchings, Sons of Kemet, Ingrid Laubrock and Vijay Iyer have found a home at the venue, which holds 100 customers for performances (70 seated). “We are indeed probably the most radical of the major jazz venues,” says the club’s director, Oliver Weindling, who, like the three other members of the board and most of the staff at the nonprofit club, is a volunteer. (A few part-timers get paid to work in the office and run sound.)
Vortex’s glass-cube facade, wedged into the red Dalston Culture House, is an attractive calling card. Get closer and you’ll discover a ramshackle air — mismatched furniture, random objects, haphazardly painted walls. The place has a lived-in, music-comes-first feel.
The club’s origins date back to 1984, when former cab driver David Mossman and business partner Irving Kinnersley opened The Vortex art gallery, blending in occasional jazz gigs. The music won out, and in 1987 the owners relaunched the space as the Vortex Jazz Bar. The club moved a mile south into its new location in 2006. Over time, Vortex has dramatically expanded the range of its programming to include Afro-pop, rock, Latin, reggae and, in years past, opera and cabaret.
Running a nearly all-volunteer jazz club poses its challenges, Weindling admits: “We have to make sure we can get quality staff every night. Also, we are continuously stretched and have to involve more and more resources to fundraising and getting more daytime use. With the personal commitments of so many of the volunteers and members, sometimes it’s very hard to move the club forward.”
Vortex devotees and visitors are just happy that the club manages to keep operating — to the tune of 300 gigs a year, year after year. www.vortexjazz.co.uk
