Ronnie Scott’s was founded in 1959 by saxophonists Ronnie Scott and Pete King, inspired by the intimate jazz clubs of New York’s 52nd Street. It became the first UK club to regularly host American jazz musicians, and its stages have since welcomed everyone from Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald to Nina Simone, Prince and Jimi Hendrix – whose final public performance took place there.

That history could easily have turned the club into a museum piece. Instead, Ronnie Scott’s has kept changing around it.

The newly reimagined Upstairs at Ronnie’s is a 140-capacity venue built to bring audiences closer to emerging and established artists, while stretching the programme beyond jazz into soul, R&B, gospel, hip-hop and classical music.

Now the club is looking beyond Soho too. Plans have been filed for a second Ronnie Scott’s on Mercer Street in Manhattan – its first venue outside the UK. There is a pleasing symmetry to the idea: a London institution originally inspired by New York jazz potentially taking its own version of club culture back across the Atlantic.

Ronnie Scott’s has never needed to leave jazz behind. It has simply kept finding new people, sounds and places to bring into the room.