Offie Mag

Ronnie Scott’s will mark 100 years since the birth of its founder with a series of special events in January 2027, including a large-scale celebration at the Barbican.

Ronnie Scott’s 100th Birthday: A Celebration In Concert will take place on January 28th, 2027, exactly 100 years after Ronnie Scott was born in East London.

Presented by Ronnie Scott’s in association with Serious, the concert will feature a specially assembled Ronnie Scott’s All Stars line-up alongside guests including Mica Paris, Curtis Stigers, Omar Puente, Art Themen, John Etheridge, Orphy Robinson and Joe Webb, with more names still to be announced.

Scott is now probably better known for the club that bears his name than for his own career as a working musician, but he was a tenor saxophonist first.

Like many British jazz musicians of his generation, he started out playing in big bands, including Ted Heath’s orchestra, before gravitating towards something smaller, more improvisational and less formal. That movement had already taken shape at places like Club Eleven, the Soho musicians’ cooperative founded in the late 1940s by a group including Scott and John Dankworth.

Scott and other British musicians also worked on transatlantic liners, crossing to New York and using their time ashore to visit American jazz clubs before returning to Britain with new records, techniques and ideas.

In 1959, Scott and fellow saxophonist Pete King opened the club that would bear his name. What began as a basement jazz club in Soho would become one of the most recognisable jazz venues in the world.

Over the decades, Ronnie Scott’s has hosted artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, Herbie Hancock and Oscar Peterson, while remaining an important platform for British musicians.

Tomorrow’s Warriors now runs a monthly residency in the refurbished Upstairs at Ronnie’s, giving emerging artists a platform inside the club. The organisation has been central to the development of generations of UK jazz musicians, with alumni including Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd and Shabaka Hutchings.

The Barbican centenary concert will be led by Ronnie Scott’s Artistic Director James Pearson, with a wider ensemble including Camilla George, Daniel Casimir, Mark Kavuma and Joe Webb. The performance will combine live music with archive footage and material connected to Scott and to musicians who have shaped the club across more than six decades.

The centenary programme begins the previous evening, January 27th, with an intimate members’ event at Ronnie Scott’s for 100 guests. Further events across January are still to be announced.

Ronnie Scott’s Managing Director Fred Nash said:

“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.”

Tickets for the Barbican concert are on sale now.

Listen: A Short History of British Jazz (in The Club)

Earlier this year, Offie Mag editor Greg Stanley traced some of the history behind British jazz clubs on Offie Radio, beginning with Club Eleven and following the movement of bebop, Caribbean music and African rhythm through post-war London before arriving at Ronnie Scott’s.