Tickets £8, Doors 7pm, Performance 8pm

Emma Smith Quintet

Emma Smith - vocals

Reuben Fowler - trumpet

Matt Robinson - piano

Andy Ball - drums

Dab Farrant - bass

Having already shared the stage with the likes of Dame Cleo Laine, the late Sir John Dankworth and ‘BBC Jazz vocalist of the year’ winners Liane Carroll and Ian Shaw, nineteen year old Emma Smith is well on her way to her achieving her dream of being an accomplished jazz singer.

It’s a journey she was destined to make, being the third generation of a family with an impressive jazz pedigree: her grandfather, Chris Smith, played trombone alongside Tubby Hayes, Oscar Peterson and Sinatra; her father, trumpeter Chris Smith Jr, writes and arranges for the BBC Big Band and her mother is an excellent saxophonist too. So, aged just 14, she had her first taste of big band singing with the Glenn Miller outfit ‘The String of Pearls Orchestra’, going on to tour frequently with the group. Emma then decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and join the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, being appointed their female vocalist and vocal coach at only 15 - a chair sponsored by Cleo Laine and the Wavendon Foundation.

In 2007, Emma was awarded a scholarship to study at the prestigious Purcell School of Music, the first ever jazz vocalist to do so, and now continues her studies at the Royal Academy of Music under the likes of Gerard Presencer, Pete Churchill, Stan Sulzmann, Nia Lynn and Tim Garland.

Studies aside, by the age of 16 Emma was already in great demand on the circuit and began to play extensively at London’s top jazz venues, including Ronnie Scott’s, The 606, The Vortex, Pizza Express Dean Street, The Spice of Life and Pizza on the Park, as well as the Oxford, Cheltenham and London Jazz Festivals. In 2009, she was invited to be part of the Vocal Summit at the London Jazz Festival, which featured Emma, Natalie Williams and Anita Wardell. The same year also saw her feature alongside Ian Shaw and Madeline Bell with the Guy Barker Big Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and rise to the challenge of “The Shakespeare Suite”, which she performed with Sir John Dankworth and his band.

She’s unquestionably the leading Jazz vocalist of her generation, so don’t miss this gig!

“An astonishingly mature performance… Exceptional agility” The Times

“Emotive power” Evening Standard

“Unquestionably the next big name on the jazz circuit” Pizza Express Jazz Club

“Top drawer musicality” The Telegraph

“She sings with a poise and facility that many singers twice her age would kill for” 606 Club