On a New High Note

A former taxi drivers' restroom on Gerrard Street in London's Soho was the first home to young tenor sax player Ronnie Scott's jazz club, which he founded in 1959 and hoped would rival those he'd visited on New York City's 52nd Street. By the time the club moved in 1965 to slightly larger premises round the corner at 47 Frith Street, Ronnie Scott's had become a British home away from home for American hardboppers like Zoot Sims, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt. And it's been known simply as the best jazz club outside of the U.S. ever since.

Like the music itself, Ronnie Scott's has had to ride the tides of fashion, but the first principles devised by Scott and cofounder Pete King—a decent piano, a late bar and a warm welcome for all—have, until its recent $4 million makeover and relaunch, been little tinkered with.

After Scott's death in 1996, King persevered for eight years but finally sold the club to British theater impresario Sally Greene. "I got a fantastic club that has been run by two amazing men for the last 45 years," says Greene, who knows nostalgia is a tricky tune to play right. "It's exactly the way it was before," she reassures, "only polished up."

Old regulars who've come to believe that good jazz needs sticky carpets and nicotined walls could find the results a bit dazzling. But French designer Jacques Garcia, who also remodeled the opulent Hôtel Costes in Paris, has retained the club's laid-back ambience: red velvet, Philippe Starck lamps and brass rails (yes, they gleam), but he added another tier of banquettes to make the stage feel more like a boxing ring. "I wanted to give the musicians the feeling of absolute power," says Garcia.

And where the food was always a bit of a joke—"A thousand flies can't be wrong, sir," was Scott's fond quip—its refitted kitchen can now produce a decent crab risotto or duck breast as part of a two-course meal that costs $42. On top of ticket prices that leap from $45 to $85 for the likes of Wynton Marsalis, free jazz this ain't. But when the music starts, cynicism melts before the club's enduring charms: the spellbinding intimacy of the space, the whisper-perfect acoustics, and of course a very decent piano.

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