Scott’s Jazz Club has announced that its residency at the Hack Club in Ballyhackamore will come to an end later this month, bringing to a close a remarkable chapter for one of Belfast’s most highly regarded jazz venues. While the loss of its home is a significant blow to the city’s jazz scene, the team behind Scott’s is already looking to the future and hopes to return at a new venue in 2027.
Scott’s Jazz Club has announced that its final concerts at the Hack Club will take place in September, with all concerts scheduled for the remainder of 2026 postponed. Ticket holders for cancelled concerts will receive full refunds.
In a statement, Scott Flanigan, Cormac O’Kane and Richard Brown reflected on six years in Ballyhackamore during which the club welcomed hundreds of musicians and thousands of audience members from around the world. The team is already in discussions with a number of potential venues for 2027 and says it is “extremely hopeful” that Scott’s Jazz Club will return next year.
For anyone who has followed the development of jazz in Belfast over those six years, the loss of the club’s Ballyhackamore home is significant. Scott’s has become much more than another stop on the gig calendar. It has demonstrated what can happen when musicians, promoters and audiences are given a dedicated space in which the music itself comes first.
Building the jazz club Belfast deserved
Scott’s began with a deceptively simple idea: Belfast should have the kind of dedicated jazz club that could be found in other major European cities.
The ambition from the outset was not simply to put a band in a room every Friday night. The founders wanted to create a listening environment in which musicians could perform at their best. Audio-visual specialists Cormac O’Kane and Richard Brown spent months developing the club’s sound, lighting and projection systems, while pianist Scott Flanigan curated and hosted its musical programme.
The unlikely setting was the upper floor of Ballyhackamore Working Men’s Club on Sandown Road. What emerged was an intimate, immersive jazz room that quickly developed a reputation extending well beyond Belfast.
The musicians themselves have perhaps provided the best measure of its success. Guitarist Rob Luft described Scott’s as the finest jazz club in the UK outside Ronnie Scott’s, while Irish guitarist Hugh Buckley compared the experience favourably with jazz clubs in New York.
Saxophonist Joel Frahm, following his own appearance at the club, summed up its importance particularly well:
“This is a very special place. The energy is amazing.”
Frahm went on to describe clubs such as Scott’s as “diamonds”, stressing their importance not only to working jazz musicians but to the cultural life of their communities.
Tommy Halferty has gone further, describing the collective work of the team at Scott’s as an “historical landmark in Jazz music making in Belfast”, highlighting its role in celebrating both Irish and international jazz.
An extraordinary programme of live jazz
A look through the Jazz Ireland archives gives some indication of the breadth and consistency of the programme that developed at Ballyhackamore.
Over the years Scott’s has presented an impressive mixture of leading Irish musicians, international visitors and emerging artists. Names appearing in the Jazz Ireland listings include Rob Luft, Elina Duni, Ivo Neame, Joel Frahm, Jeff Ballard, Leo Richardson, Tommy Halferty, Hugh Buckley, Paul Dunlea, Michael Buckley, Ronan Guilfoyle, Linley Hamilton, Joe Webb, Nigel Mooney, Darren Beckett, Phil Robson, Dave Redmond, Arthur Kell and Sam Braysher, among many others.
The archive stretches back to 2021, with early Jazz Ireland listings including Phil Robson Trio, Linley Hamilton Quartet, Victoria Geelan with Scott Flanigan and Barry McCrudden’s Upfront album launch. By 2025 and 2026, Scott’s was maintaining an extraordinary schedule, frequently presenting a different concert every Friday night.
The quality of the visiting musicians could be exceptional. In December 2025, for example, Scott’s presented the Fabian Willmann Trio featuring American drummer Jeff Ballard, while the preceding weeks had included Leo Richardson with Darren Beckett, Howl Quartet and James Allsopp.
Yet the achievement of Scott’s cannot be measured simply by assembling a list of established names.
Giving emerging musicians a stage
One of the most valuable aspects of the club has been its willingness to give developing artists the same serious listening environment afforded to established performers.
Its Jazz Futures series was created specifically to put emerging musicians under the spotlight. Jazz Ireland listings document editions featuring musicians including Zak Irvine, Tom Maxwell, Hayley Kavanagh, Rory Conneally and Leon Buckley.
That commitment has not gone unnoticed.
Writing for All About Jazz following Hayley Kavanagh’s first Belfast appearance in August 2025, Ian Patterson highlighted Jazz Futures as one of the club’s strengths: a programme giving up-and-coming Irish musicians access to both the stage and an audience accustomed to high-quality jazz. Kavanagh's quartet was appearing as part of the seventh instalment of the series.
Read the Hayley Kavanagh concert review at All About Jazz
The club has also provided artists with something increasingly valuable: somewhere they could return to as their music developed.
All About Jazz noted this in its coverage of Venezuelan-Chilean guitarist Orlando Molina. Molina first appeared at Scott’s in March 2024, with that performance subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio. When he returned, he had released his debut album Autorretrato en Tres Colores, and the reviewer remarked on the opportunity Scott’s provided audiences to witness the evolution of musicians and their bands over successive appearances.
Read the Orlando Molina concert review at All About Jazz
It is an important distinction. Supporting emerging musicians is not simply about giving someone a first gig. It is about providing somewhere to come back to, develop an audience, try new music and grow.
The difficult economics of a jazz club
Behind the packed houses and Friday-night performances lies a less visible reality: presenting high-quality live jazz week after week is expensive.
Scott’s has previously appealed directly to its community for help through its Help Scott’s Jazz Club to Grow fundraising campaign. The club established the not-for-profit organisation Live Under Giants to support its work, and the scale of the financial challenge was laid out openly in the fundraiser.
The club estimated the annual cost of producing 52 concerts at £119,800, against average ticket income of £54,600 — demonstrating the considerable gap that has to be bridged if a weekly programme is to remain both professionally produced and affordable to audiences.
That philosophy has been present from the beginning. Speaking about the club in 2022, Cormac O’Kane explained that revenue was put back into Scott’s rather than being treated as profit. The objective was a world-class musical experience, with high-quality musicianship, sound and presentation at its centre.
Live Under Giants describes itself as a not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to developing Belfast's arts scene, with Scott's among its live projects.
The work has also received formal recognition. Scott’s has been described in coverage as an award-winning venue, including in All About Jazz's 2025 report on Hayley Kavanagh's appearance.
One last September in Ballyhackamore
Scott’s Jazz Club is not finished.
That distinction is important.
The residency at Ballyhackamore is coming to an end, but Scott, Cormac and Richard are already speaking to other venues and are hopeful that a new chapter will begin in 2027.
Before that happens, there are still concerts to be played.
The remaining programme at the Hack Club includes TRIO-SKW on September 11th and Paul Dunlea Organ Trio on September 18th, followed by the final weekend of the club’s September programme. The Jazz Ireland archive reflects just how active the programme remained right to the end, with Mike Nielsen’s Sound Recipes opening September before TRIO-SKW and Paul Dunlea.
For six years, Scott’s Jazz Club has demonstrated what a dedicated jazz venue can contribute to a city. It has brought leading international musicians to Belfast, supported artists from across the island of Ireland, provided a stage for musicians at the beginning of their careers and created an audience that comes to listen.
Perhaps most importantly, it proved the idea upon which the whole venture was founded.
Belfast deserved a proper jazz club.
Scott, Cormac, Richard and everyone who helped them along the way built one.
The hope now is that before too long, they will have somewhere to build its next chapter.
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