The Night
Friday night at Jack Solomons starts the way the best basement nights do: down the stairs, cocktail in hand, the room already warm. This is the Discovery Stage, the basement at 41 Great Windmill Street where the Club points its regulars at whoever is coming next, and this Friday belongs to Katy Baker: the swing songbook sung the way cabaret taught her, all timing, all charm, and a wink you can hear. Cocktails at the kiosk from 6:30 PM, show at 8:00 PM. Get down early and take the seats near the front.
The Music
Katy Baker trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and has spent close to two decades running London cabaret from the front: singer, comedian and compère, and one quarter of the 1940s styled vocal group Four Femmes on the Thames, whom Londonist praised for a remarkable line in jazz, swing and cabaret style vocal numbers without a bum note between them. She hosts, she lands the joke, she holds the note. Swing and cabaret classics are her home ground, and a candlelit piano room is exactly the right size for the act.
The Swing Songbook is the golden age with its stockings straightened: Fitzgerald and Day, Porter and Coward, the tunes that were always meant to come with a raised eyebrow. Baker's cabaret instincts mean the patter between numbers earns its place beside the songs, and she works a room individually, even one of ninety seats. One act, one full set, through Europe's first fully immersive Yamaha sound system, and at least one song about misbehaving. Order the cocktail. She will notice, and approve.
Baker has a singing voice that I can only describe as 'sex'.
The F Word
Plan Your Visit
41 Great Windmill Street, Soho, W1D 7NB
///solo.serve.book
· Piccadilly Circus 2 min
· Leicester Square 4 min
Sets (8.30-9.15PM, 9.30-10.15PM)
Cocktails from 6.30PM
Transfers or refunds up to 48 hours before the event. Members receive 50% off advance tickets and walk-in privileges. Assistance and private hire · concierge@soho.live. Please check the date on your booking before checkout. Full terms.
