EFG London Jazz Festival: Spice Jazz Soho: Sophie Alloway Quartet

Sophie Alloway leads her quartet at Crazy Coqs - Live At Zédel on Friday 13 November, as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. It's a night built around contemporary jazz, with the set drawn from the work of Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock — four names that pretty much map out a huge chunk of the jazz world since the sixties.

Alloway is a drummer who's spent a lot of time in the session world, and that's where the context for this show sits. She's become a go-to for high-profile artists, with appearances on Later... with Jools Holland, the Mercury Music Prize, and Glastonbury, and she's played for King Charles III. Her featured tracks on Abbey Road Masters: The Drum Sessions have been used on radio and TV worldwide, and she sat in on drums for all the BBC Young Jazz Musician 2024 finalists. Jazz FM called her a 'goddess of groove', which gives you a fair idea of where her head is at: the rhythm section first, the song second.

For this particular show, she's put together a classic jazz quartet to work through that Metheny, Shorter, Corea and Hancock material. On piano is Ross Stanley, on saxophone Mornington Lockett, and on bass Laurence Cottle. It's a standard line-up — piano, sax, bass and drums — so the focus stays on the playing and the arrangements rather than any fancy additions. With a setlist like that, the night will lean on the melodic, expansive side of contemporary jazz, the kind of stuff that works just as well if you're sitting and listening as if you're just letting it run in the background.

Crazy Coqs is at 20 Sherwood Street, London W1F 7ED. Doors open at 6:15pm, and the music starts at 7:00pm. Tickets are £20 including fees.