BLUE NOTE COMES TO LONDON
New York's legendary jazz club crosses the Atlantic. This September, London gets a Blue Note of its own.
For more than four decades, the Blue Note has been part of the mythology of New York after dark. A basement room in Greenwich Village, a small stage and the possibility of sitting only a few feet from musicians one might ordinarily expect to see from the other side of a concert hall. Since opening in 1981, its name has travelled far beyond New York, but until now, never to Britain.
That changes on 23 September, when Blue Note London opens beneath St Martins Lane hotel in Covent Garden. It will be the first British outpost of the famous club, arriving in a city whose own relationship with jazz is already long, complicated and very much alive.
There is something particularly appealing about a new London opening that asks us to go underground, sit at a table and listen. At a time when so much entertainment seems to be becoming bigger, brighter and increasingly designed to be experienced through a phone screen, Blue Note is built around an older and rather more intimate proposition: musician, audience, room.
NEW YORK, VIA COVENT GARDEN
The original Blue Note opened in Greenwich Village in 1981 and developed a reputation for bringing major musicians into unusually close proximity with their audiences. The London club intends to preserve that intimacy rather than simply borrowing the famous name.
Its main room will accommodate around 250 people, with two performances planned on most nights. A second, smaller space called B Side, with room for around 100, is expected to follow later and place particular emphasis on emerging British talent. The interiors lean into the club's heritage with deep blue tones, draped walls, bespoke lighting and the sort of close table seating that makes the distinction between audience and stage feel considerably less important.
It sounds pleasingly unlike an arena.
OPENING NIGHT
Blue Note London opens with Robert Glasper on 23 September, a date that would also have marked John Coltrane's 100th birthday. Glasper feels an appropriate choice for a club interested in jazz not as something preserved in amber, but as a form continually colliding with everything around it. His work has moved freely through jazz, R&B and hip hop, including collaborations with artists from Erykah Badu to Kendrick Lamar.
The programme that follows makes the same argument. Erykah Badu, Jamie Cullum, Nubya Garcia, Yussef Dayes, Kokoroko and Hak Baker are among the names announced for the opening season. This is not an attempt to recreate a New York jazz club of 1981 in London in 2026. The more interesting possibility is that the London incarnation develops a personality of its own.
THE RETURN OF THE NIGHT OUT
Perhaps what appeals most about Blue Note London is the ritual surrounding it. There are still places where the evening itself matters, where one goes not simply to consume a performance but to inhabit a room for several hours.
Jazz lends itself particularly well to this. It changes according to who is playing, who is listening and what happens in the space between them. The performance you hear cannot be reproduced exactly the following evening. In a culture increasingly built around replaying, recording and sharing everything, there is something luxurious about an experience that belongs primarily to the people who were actually there.
And then there is the simple pleasure of going out properly. Have dinner. Wear the jacket. Order a drink. Sit close enough to see the musicians communicate without speaking and resist the temptation to experience the best parts through a six inch screen.
New York has understood the appeal for forty five years. This autumn, London gets its turn.
Blue Note London opens at 42 to 49 St Martin's Lane on 23 September 2026.