A date for your diary: Amy Gadiaga plays One Living Room in November

“OPEN Nightly” proclaims the famed neon sign above Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Frith Street. Well, that’s usually the case, but it isn’t for the next few weeks. As you read this Ronnies has closed for all of August.
“It’s been a while since it had a full structural survey,” says music booking manager Paul Pace. “So, we thought we would take the opportunity to refresh the club – we’ll redecorate, increase the legroom for the seats to the left of the stage and modernise the bar area.”

There are also, he explained, big changes afoot for the upstairs room, with a completely new layout (and, I hope, an end to the sometimes malodorous plumbing) that will be a whole year in the making. Fear not though, the Ronnie Scott’s brand has holiday plans this summer – like so much jazz in the capital (think The Vortex, eartH, Hackney Church, Servant’s Jazz Quarters, Brilliant Corners, Grow etc) it is heading east.

Its temporary home will be at Ninety One Living Room, which is housed in the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. It already has strong jazz credentials – it is one of the focal points of the annual Brick Lane Jazz Festival and home of Jazz Re:Freshed crew, of which more momentarily.

The Ronnie Scott’s nights, which echo the line-ups of the 11.15pm late show at the club, will feature trumpeter Jackson Mathod (August 3), a regular at the club, upstairs and down; Phil Meadows’ Future Movers (August 10), which continues the club’s policy of showcasing rising jazz stars; ShadeINDIGO, which is hosted by the charming and talented vocalist Cherise (August 13); New Zealand-born drummer Myele Manzanza (August 17), a mainstay of the London scene who has played with the likes of Shabaka and Ashley Henry; jazztronica from Dutch drummer and producer Creature (August 24) and that acclaimed stalwart of Ronnie’s Late Late Shows, the ebullient singer Vula Malinga (& Friends) who closes up the proceedings on August 31. Tickets and more info: https://91livingroom.com/whats-on/

Ronnie’s planned re-opening is September 2 with Natalie Williams’ Soul Family followed by RS’s Jazz Orchestra later in the week. See https://www.ronniescotts.co.uk/ for full September programme.

It is difficult to overstate the impact that the Jazz Re:Freshed organisation has had on the London jazz scene over the past decade. With its club nights (originally over at the Mau Mau Bar in West London, now settled into Ninety One Living Room), radio shows and record label, almost anyone who is anyone in “nu jazz” – from Nubya Garcia and Shabaka through to Daniel Casimir and Rosie Turton – owes founders Justin McKenzie and Adam Moses (and their team) a massive debt of thanks.

The work continues. Recently Jazz Re:Freshed ran its day-long festival at the South Bank. I couldn’t make all of it, but I caught punchy, short sets by in-demand trumpeter Poppy Daniels, piano wizard Sultan Stevens and rising jazz/R&B keys man Insxght. Try and get along to next year’s edition by subscribing at https://www.jazzrefreshed.com/contact

It also runs weekly showcases at Ninety One Living Room on Thursdays, featuring those artists you wish you had seen before they outgrew such venues, for less than a tenner. For a list of upcoming shows see: https://www.jazzrefreshed.com/weekly-residency

The record label continues to put out new albums: Daniel Casimir’s excellent big band Balance, Insxght’s A Night with Insxght and Paris-born bassist and vocalist Amy Gadiaga’s captivating All Black Everything all being recent examples that are well worth investigating. It’s a way off, but Amy plays One Living Room on November 15 as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival (more of which closer to the time).

You don’t have to wait that long to catch another Jazz Re:Freshed alumnus though, as Sultan Stevenson plays at the World Heart Beat music academy and performance space over in Nine Elms on August 8. We have praised both his playing and his handmade hats in these pages before. If you like your jazz spiritual and model yet melodic and funky, the show is well worth a hop down the Northern Line. Details: https://worldheartbeat.org/whats-on/

• It seems to be Big Band Week in my house. I have been listening to a brace of new albums that feature large jazz ensembles, as well as enjoying Overtime, an older disc of the Dave Holland Big Band. Jihye Lee is that vanishingly rare thing – a Korean pop star/model who has turned her hand to arranging and composing large-scale jazz works. I thought her first album, Daring Mind, was pretty fabulous, although you could clearly hear the debts to Gil Evans and Maria Schneider. But the sophomore Infinite Connections is something else – bold, dramatic, stately, cinematic, moving and uplifting and featuring complex harmonies, thrilling arrangements, big tunes and terrific solos. A highly recommended stylistic leap forward to a personal sound.

Perhaps more suited to a sunny day than the Sturm und Drang of Jihye Lee’s works, Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles’ Creole Orchestra – his first big band outing under his own name – is an exuberant, joyous affair. It kicks off with the appropriately named Old School, which is a happy melding of jazz and calypso with a touch of smooth Duke Ellington magic in there.

You can imagine Harry Beckett nodding along approvingly. A slightly more subdued Caribbean feeling underpins Monty Alexander’s Think Twice, with its incisive trumpet and trombone solos. The record also features a vocalist, as most big bands back in the day would have, and singer Rene Marie has a ball tackling Eartha Kitt’s theme song, I Wanna Be Evil and a couple of her originals.

There’s also a hard-swinging reading of that old warhorse Stompin’ at the Savoy and of Ellington sideman’s Jimmy Forrest’s bluesy march, Night Train. There are nods to more modern times – there is a turntablist and rapper on Bell Biv Devoe’s 90s hip hop tune Poison and a dip into 1966 with Joe Henderson’s A Shade of Jade (from his excellent Blue Note album Mode for Joe) – but for the most part this a fun, well-played, fresh-sounding, good-time celebration of the big band and swing eras. It’ll be interesting to see what Etienne Charles does next with his new arranger’s skill set.