Classical concerts get a cool makeover as one of Soho’s best-loved nightspots opens its upstairs space to the great composers. Georgia Mann has the dope

February is surely the worst month of the year. It’s cold, it’s dark, the festive season is a distant memory and spring feels like it may never arrive. As for Mondays… Bob Geldof once demanded in song-form that we tell him why he doesn’t like them. Well I know why I don’t like Mondays, Bob – it’s because they’re so far away from Fridays. Which is why it’s particularly great news that this February, Monday nights are about to get a whole lot better. A brand-new venue for classical music is opening up, in a somewhat unlikely place: Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club on Frith Street in Soho. Yes, that cathedral to jazz – where everyone from Nina Simone to Miles Davis to Amy Winehouse has played – is opening a new space, Upstairs at Ronnie’s, where Mozart, Schubert and Bach will hopefully draw in as big a crowd as the standards being performed downstairs do.

I spend my life trying to get classical music into the ears of those who may not be familiar with it, so my heart soared to see this new venture on the horizon. But, even with a reputation like Ronnie’s, it’s a challenge to get a 120-person venue full on a Monday night, especially for a genre that many people feel uncertain of. Ronnie’s foray into classical is being led by violinist, vocalist and producer Lizzie Ball, together with Ronnie Scott’s charismatic artistic director and pianist James Pearson. I met Lizzie at the Curzon Cinema just down the road from Ronnie’s to get the lowdown.

“Those who know Ronnie’s know upstairs as the fun, sticky-floored bar,” says Lizzie. “But it’s being completely rebuilt and refurbished and it’s going to be one of most beautiful small live music venues around.” I put it to her that the legendary founder of this club would have been very approving – Ronnie Scott famously loved classical music as well as jazz, and was mighty pleased with himself for getting classical guitarist John Williams to play at his club.

A photo of Ronnie watches over Lizzie as she books the inaugural classical season at Ronnie’s, and she thinks his generation (Scott was born in 1927 in the East End of London) was far more open-minded about nipping across musical borders.

“Any jazz musician from that era would be unusual if they weren’t into classical music too. We know Bill Evans and Miles Davis both loved it – Evans was inspired by Debussy.” Evans and Davis would have been used to playing venues where they could see the whites of their audience’s eyes, and that’s not something your average classical player encounters, but the intimacy of the jazz club is what Lizzie thinks is going to make this classical offering different.

“The intimacy is where classical music will benefit. You don’t often see classical music in this way. In traditional concert halls you can miss that visceral feeling.”

This is going to be classical done very much in the spirit of Ronnie Scott. Lizzie is keen to point out that if you book tickets for Upstairs at Ronnie’s (prices rom £30 to £60), it will be a much less formal affair than traditional classical concerts, with waiters walking around serving food and drink, and a team of mixologists shaking cocktails at the bar. This is Chopin with a side order of fries, and an Art Deco-esque interior with “lots of booths”.

But how to find classical musicians who can fit with the jazz club vibe?

“I’ve had to ask myself who can transcend those boundaries,” says Lizzie. Well it turns out that some of the hottest young classical acts around are signed up. Piano and violin duo Elena Urioste and Tom Poster will be bringing their jukebox format to Ronnie’s, while an ensemble from Chineke! Orchestra will also appear. Plus there’ll be a music-and-conversation strand called Close Up Classical, featuring big names such as actress Juliet Stevenson and film composer David Arnold, who will talk about the music they love alongside live performances of their chosen works. Oh, and if you’ve experienced my Classical DJ sets at the Idler Festival these last few summers, we’re hoping to bring a version of that to Ronnie’s too.

It all starts on 9 February with music by the man who truly transcended the jazz/classical fault lines, George Gershwin. James Pearson will be at the piano with the Ronnie Scott’s Classical All Stars performing Rhapsody in Blue, a work that usually involves the full might of the orchestra but in this new upstairs bar will be played by a group of seven. Gershwin once wrote: “true music … must repeat the thought and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans. My time is today.” Perhaps this new classical venture, in a formerly sticky-floored jazz bar, tells you something encouraging about music in our time – or at least Monday nights in Soho.

This article is from Idler #107.

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