Jazz
Ronnie Scott was born in Aldgate on 28 January 1927, and on the day he would have turned a hundred the club he founded takes over the Barbican Hall with “Ronnie Scott’s 100th Birthday: A Celebration In Concert”: Thursday 28 January 2027 at 7.30pm, presented with Serious, at the centre of a programme running through January. Tickets are £44, or £18 on Young Barbican membership, for sixteen to twenty-nine-year-olds.
It is led by James Pearson, the club’s artistic director, with the Ronnie Scott’s All Stars: Art Themen, John Etheridge, Orphy Robinson and Byron Wallen, joined by a newer generation — Camilla George, Daniel Casimir, Mark Kavuma and Joe Webb. Mica Paris, Curtis Stigers and Omar Puente join as guests, with more names to be announced. The music alternates with historic film and archive material. The night before, Wednesday 27, the club throws a party for a hundred members.
Scott was the son of a dance band saxophonist, Joseph Schatt, who worked as Jock Scott: the father’s professional surname is the one the son used all his life. By sixteen he was playing London’s small clubs, and in 1946 he joined Ted Heath’s band. He went to hear bebop at the source, working the bands on the liner Queen Mary, which gave him his New York nights. In 1948 he was among the founders of Club Eleven, the first British room given over to modern jazz, which a police raid closed in April 1950; in 1957 he formed The Jazz Couriers with Tubby Hayes, and from 1967 to 1969 he played in the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band.
He opened the club with fellow saxophonist Pete King on 30 October 1959 in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street, and in 1965 it moved to 47 Frith Street, where it still stands. “Ronnie Scott’s was built on a love of music, musicians and the extraordinary experience of hearing great artists perform live, and that spirit remains at the heart of the club today,” says managing director Fred Nash. Scott died in December 1996; King ran it for another nine years and sold it in 2005 to Sally Greene and Michael Watt.
Text by Aina Torrents