The Jay Rayner Quartet

Restaurant critic Jay Rayner, undoubtedly the best jazz pianist in Britain of all the judges on MasterChef, leads an ensemble of top flight musicians through a compelling and vivid night of the very best of song-writing and jazz.

Expect blistering performances of iconic tunes from jazz greats like Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver and Dexter Gordon, through to song-writing legends including Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Joan Armatrading. All of this comes liberally seasoned with extraordinary, often outrageous, sometimes filthy stories from Jay’s life in the worlds of food and journalism.

Since forming the Jay Rayner Quartet in 2012, the band have played some of the most prestigious music venues in Britain, including Ronnie Scott’s, King’s Place and Snape Maltings. In 2022 they celebrated ten years of gigging by becoming a sextet and launching a new repertoire of arrangements celebrating the chart hits of the 80s which had jazz in their bones, songs by Sade, Matt Bianco, Everything But The Girl, Swing Out Sister and more.

A night spent with the Jay Rayner Quartet promises great music, killer stories and often quite inappropriate laughter. With the bassist Robert Rickenberg, saxophonist Dave Lewis, singer Pat Gordon-Smith, guitarist Chris Cobbson and drummer Sophie Alloway.