Blue Note London opened yesterday, on the exact centenary of John Coltrane's birth. Grammy winner Robert Glasper, the club's creative ambassador, marked the occasion with a set that honoured Coltrane, covered Radiohead, sampled D'Angelo and Dolly Parton and declared hip hop inseparable from jazz's future. Following weeks of teaser videos showing Glasper in a high-vis vest and hard hat surveying the raw St Martin's Lane basement, the Texan pianist sauntered, unnoticed and chewing gum, through the sold-out crowd of 250. "Mental advisory alert," read his T-shirt. "Creative content within."
After a warm-up set by DJ Jahi Sundance, who'd stay onstage, elevating his turntables into a live jazz instrument, and with virtuoso sidemen Burniss Travis II on bass and Justin Tyson on drums, Glasper settled behind his fortress of synths as if chilling in his front room. And what a room: designed by New York-based Legeard Studio, the club is a dark, blue-hued space of heavy drapes, jazz photography and intimate tables. Each bears a branded plaque echoing those at the original Blue Note in Greenwich Village; ours bore the name Ezra Collective.
London's jazz names were out in force, too - watching from the balcony, sipping signature cocktails ('Deep Cut Cosmo', 'Soundcheck Spritz') by the bar. Chatter dropped away as Glasper began reworking songs - his own and others - in real time. A chorus became a vocoder-treated mantra. Keyboard phrases were daubed, impressionistically, over washes of electronica and Tyson's precise playing. Moments of delicacy, of transcendent flow, had us leaning in. Laura Mvula's dreamy 'Sing to the Moon' was transformed when Mvula herself took the microphone at her table beside the stage.
Tempos shifted, careened. A melodic bass solo felt painterly. Glasper vacated his seat for a Sundance-led mash-up of 'Jolene', D'Angelo's neo-soul hit 'Lady' and De La Soul's 'Me Myself and I' then returned to weave in Coltrane's chant "A love supreme." Then, as the groove gathered pace and breakbeats weighed in, we were up and dancing. "Hip hop is jazz. Jazz is hip hop," came a recorded decree. And with that, Blue Note London was officially up and running.
