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Shure brings audio to Upstairs at Ronnie’s as Ronnie Scott’s opens new live music room

Jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, located in London’s Soho district, has turned to Shure to deliver the audio backbone of Upstairs at Ronnie’s, its newly redeveloped live music room. The venue, which sits above the club’s downstairs stage, has been built from the ground up.

Designed to seat 140 guests, Upstairs at Ronnie’s pairs a Yamaha S3X Grand Piano and d&b Audiotechnik sound system with a fully digital Shure microphone and monitoring signal chain built around SLX-D+ and Axient Digital PSM. “With Upstairs at Ronnie’s, we set ourselves the somewhat audacious goal of creating the greatest small live music venue in the world”, says Charlie Dale, Technical Manager at Ronnie Scott’s. “We wanted a space where artists and audiences could feel even closer to the music.”

The redevelopment gives the club the platform to support a far broader range of performances than would traditionally be associated with a small jazz club. Monday nights host a classical series presented by violinist Lizzie Ball and the club’s Artistic Director and House Pianist James Pearson; Wednesdays focus on jazz vocal performances followed by a vocal jam night for emerging and established singers alike; and the venue’s long-running Friday night Cuban music session continues a tradition stretching back well over a decade.

“For many of the shows, our goal is to make the PA as audibly invisible as possible, while also needing the ability to have a more vibey and in-your-face sound for shows that require it”, Dale notes. The club is open 362 days a year, often staging between two and four shows daily, placing significant demands on every piece of equipment in the building. “We needed to make sure the equipment we chose was as robust as possible”, Dale continues. “Working with trusted brands within the industry such as Shure, d&b and Yamaha was essential to achieve these goals.”

Upstairs at Ronnie’s deploys Shure SLX-D+ for microphones and Axient Digital PSM for in-ear monitoring, giving the venue a fully digital signal chain from mic to monitor. Four channels of Axient Digital PSM are run, with the system also allowing the team to monitor RF quality and settings directly from the console over the venue’s Dante network.

The venue’s Axient Digital PSM system benefits from Shure’s recent firmware update introducing Single Carrier (SC) Narrowband, a new digital transmission mode designed to give engineers a more familiar and dependable RF setup without the need for complex coordination or advanced antenna configurations. The option of stereo in-ear monitoring, an increasingly common request within the jazz world, gives artists greater choice over how they perform and monitor themselves within such an intimate setting.

The club praised the installation and commissioning support provided by the Shure UK team: “Working with the UK Shure team is always a great experience, and this time is no different”, Dale concludes. “A huge thanks must go to Stuart Moots and Peppe Mallozzi for organising the installation, and to Jack Drury and Andrew Francis for commissioning the installation for us, including making sure we had the latest firmware on all the equipment and that our Dante network was rock solid.”

(Photos: Photus Photography/Taran Wilkhu/James Wood)

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