The London Jazz Festival Marks 100 Years of Miles Davis and John Coltrane

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were both born in 1926, and this November the EFG London Jazz Festival is marking the centenary of both. The London Jazz Festival runs from Friday 13 to Sunday 22 November across more than 70 venues in over half of London's boroughs, and its centenary strand stretches from a sold-out Coltrane tribute at the Barbican on opening night to a Miles Davis celebration at Milton Court a week later.

For listeners, that makes this year's edition an unusually easy way in. Here is how the centenary programme fits together, what else is worth hearing, and where to start if jazz is new to you.

Why 1926 Shapes This Year's Programme

This is the festival's 34th edition. It is produced by Serious, with EFG Private Bank as title sponsor, and it fills London with ten days of headline concerts, intimate club dates, new commissions and community events, according to the festival's spring announcement, published in full by The Jazz Mann. That announcement called Davis and Coltrane "two of jazz's biggest and most enduring figures" and promised "large-scale projects and ambitious collaborations" to mark the centenaries.

The festival sums up its own approach in one line: "Jazz is an open conversation." It is a useful way to read the programme. The centenary events sit beside West African song, Japanese jazz, Irish experimental music, Goldie with an orchestra and choir, and the trip-hop of Morcheeba, and the idea is that a listener can move between them without needing a map.

Coltrane 100 Opens the Festival at the Barbican

The centrepiece is Coltrane 100: Both Directions at Once, at the Barbican Hall on Friday 13 November. The Barbican brings together saxophonists Joe Lovano and Melissa Aldana, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts for a collective tribute, produced with the approval of the Coltrane estate. JAZZIZ reported at the start of October that the concert had already sold out.

The band is not planning a recreation. "This quintet will honour Coltrane's compositions as a springboard to explore and express ourselves," Lovano said. "We do not seek to recreate, but rather to create in the spirit of Coltrane." The Barbican describes Makhathini as drawing on South African musical and spiritual traditions as well as the legacy of McCoy Tyner.

Coltrane returns on the second weekend. On Saturday 21 November, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and vocalist Dianne Reeves revisit Coltrane's 1963 collaboration with the singer Johnny Hartman at British Airways ARC, the newest venue in Olympia. There is a film strand too: the Barbican's Jazz on Screen series includes Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues as part of the Coltrane programming.

Two Ways Into Miles Davis

The Miles Davis side of the centenary takes very different routes. On opening night at the EartH Theatre in Hackney, the composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Emma-Jean Thackray presents Dear Miles, A Love Letter, which takes inspiration from Davis's electric era and pushes further into electronic territory, with beat-driven reimaginings that blur the line between jazz improvisation and dance music culture.

A week later, on Friday 20 November, the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra stages a Miles Davis centenary celebration at Milton Court, according to Dork. In between, the Barbican hosts a screening centred on Davis's later work on 14 November. Between them, the three events offer three very different ways to hear his music.

The Big Nights Beyond the Centenaries

The festival opens with its annual gala, Jazz Voice, at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on 13 November. Lizz Wright, Emma Smith, Marvin Muoneké, Liv Warfield, Rita Wilson and James Emmanuel are confirmed, singing with Guy Barker's EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra across songs by Prince and Leonard Cohen, jazz standards and originals.

The headline concerts that follow are deliberately varied:

• Goldie presents Dare to Dream at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 November, with an orchestra, a choir and guests including anaiis, Natalie Williams and Cleveland Watkiss.
• Melody Gardot plays the Royal Albert Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Bell, on 16 November.
• Fatoumata Diawara brings her West African grooves to the Roundhouse on 18 November.
• The Kronos Quartet performs its tribute to the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 20 November.
• Samara Joy closes the festival at the Royal Festival Hall on 22 November, returning after a sold-out headline show in 2023, while Cécile McLorin Salvant reimagines an intimate vocal evening with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the same night.

Smaller Rooms and Surprising Strands

Some of the most interesting programming sits away from the big halls. A Japanese strand includes Haruki Murakami's Jazz at Peter Cat: A Japanese Jazz Night, which turns the Barbican stage into the Tokyo jazz club Murakami owned in the 1970s, with Kyoto Jazz Massive, the Junko Onishi Trio, Sachi Hayasaka / TReS and Yoshio Suzuki's The Blend among the artists.

The Barbican's own programme also includes Anouar Brahem's After the Last Sky on 15 November, a quartet for oud, cello, piano and double bass with Anja Lechner, Django Bates and Mats Eilertsen, in which Arab classical motifs meet improvisation. The project takes its title from a line by Mahmoud Darwish: "Where should the birds fly, after the last sky?"

On 14 November Asha Puthli brings The Cosmic Voyager to the Barbican with special guests Anoushka Shankar, Sarathy Korwar and Yazz Ahmed, and on the 15th Dave Okumu & Friends present DVTN: Music Changes the World, from Nina Simone to Sly Stone, at Union Chapel.

New this year is Éire Eile, or Another Ireland, a series of Irish jazz and experimental acts presented with the National Concert Hall and supported by Culture Ireland. It begins with Muireann Bradley at Stone Nest, takes in Le Boom with AE Mak at Village Underground, and closes on 19 November with Robocobra Quartet and Córas Trio.

The club calendar is just as full. GoGo Penguin play two nights at KOKO on 16 and 17 November, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire leads a quartet at Kings Place on 15 November, and on opening night Sarathy Korwar plays Barking Riverside while the pianist Fergus McCreadie plays Kings Place.

How to Start if Jazz Is New to You

The London Jazz Festival is easier to approach than its size suggests. There is free and family programming across both weekends, the free FreeStage performances return to the Barbican's foyers, and The Jazz Social is back at Citypoint. A free set is a low-risk way to find out what you like before buying tickets.

For the centenary shows, a little listening beforehand helps. The photograph at the top of this page shows Coltrane in Amsterdam in November 1961, holding a copy of his album Giant Steps, and that record is a natural first step before the Barbican tribute. Before Marsalis and Reeves, the 1963 Hartman collaboration is the obvious homework; before Emma-Jean Thackray, start with Davis's electric period, which her show is built on.

London has a long habit of turning local sounds into national ones, as tiptop.music traced when it looked at how UK garage went from pirate radio to TikTok's UK song of the summer. In jazz, JAZZIZ notes, it is the club culture that has long sustained the music in the city, and the festival remains deeply connected to it. Book early, though: several shows have already sold out.