EFG London Jazz Festival 2021

Joe Stilgoe 'The Entertainers'

Featuring Giacomo Smith

Event Has Passed

Last Show: Friday 19 th November 2021

PizzaExpress Jazz Club (Soho)

In March 2020, Joe Stilgoe and Giacomo Smith, both recent nominees in the 2021 Parliamentary Jazz Awards, were about to head into the studio to record an album. Featuring a whole new collection of songs written together in 2019, the music was destined to showcase two of the country’s finest creative talents, and with a headline Mainstage show booked at Love Supreme to launch the project, 2020 was going to be the year of The Entertainers. As we know, things didn’t turn out quite the way they were planned, but the story remains and the music is ever more prescient after the year we’ve all had. These songs are about the world of jazz clubs, the audiences who come and go, the characters who can be found at the bars of any club in the world, from Ronnie Scotts to The Blue Note Tokyo to The Basement in Sydney. Each song tells a different tale and presents a different character - they’re about membership, acceptance, a shared love of something vital, quixotic rules and regulations, the minutiae of everynight life, and importantly, the world of entertainment. The people are the same everywhere you go, and they haven’t changed. The guy in the hat, the woman with the flowers, the one who can’t stop shouting at the drummer, the illicit lovers, the nervous fan, the faded star, the record executive who promises the world… The project is a love letter to the jazz club and the people who can’t live without it. Featuring an exciting new band of some of the great young UK jazz talent, this is an unmissable date as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival.

“A very British Harry Connick Jr”

The Times

Joe Stilgoe is an internationally acclaimed singer, pianist and songwriter.

He has released 8 albums, five of which have topped the UK Jazz chart. Growing up as the youngest of 5 children he was surrounded by music, with two parents in the business -songwriter and TV personality Richard Stilgoe and opera-singing Annabel Hunt.

He is a true modern-day entertainer, known globally as a performer of wit, style and a level of musicianship which has seen him recognised as one of the best singer-pianists in the world. Always searching for a new way of bringing not only his own songs but those he loves from the past to a new audience, he is an enticing mix of his heroes Danny Kaye, Nat King Cole and Dudley Moore, and influenced by Harry Connick Jr, Peter Skellern, Cole Porter, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beach Boys, Oscar Peterson, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin and Joni Mitchell.

His latest album, Stilgoe In The Shed, which topped the UK Jazz Chart, came about after Joe started broadcasting on Youtube from his shed at the start of the pandemic in 2020. The resulting show ‘Stilgoe In The Shed’ picked up over 180,000 viewers around the world, and led to this unique album, praised in the UK press and featured on both BBC and ITV news. He has created award-winning theatre shows including A Tribute To Gene Kelly, Songs On Film and Live At The Lyric with his own big band.

Band Line Up

Joe Stilgoe (vocals and piano)

Giacomo Smith (clarinet, sax and piano)

Dave Archer (guitar)

Tom Farmer (bass)

Jas Kayser (drums)

Sumudu (vocals)