London Latin Jazz Festival 2025 at PizzaExpress Live, Soho – is back!
The 12th edition of the London Latin Jazz Festival brings a week of world class Latin and Latin jazz musics to the exclusive, intimate atmosphere of PizzaExpress Jazz Club in the heart of Soho. Yearly curated by pianist and cultural figure Eliane Correa, this year features guest curation by Latinx cultural collective BONITA. Book in advance to avoid disappointment on www.londonlatinjazzfest.com
Tuesday, October 07th, 2025 – (8pm)
Inês Loubet is a Portuguese singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose music brings together Latin-jazz, Tropicália, and soulful grooves. Her debut album Senga (Albert’s Favourites, 2024) is already receiving rave reviews for its Brazilian-oriented rhythms and poetic lyrics, thanks in part to airplay by Jazz FM, BBC Radio 6, and Worldwide FM.
Inês has played the EFG London Jazz Festival, Tropical Pressure, Brick Lane Jazz Festival, as well as prestigious venues, such as the Royal Albert Hall and Union Chapel. Praised for her lush harmonies and rhythmic pulse, Inês is being heralded as an the important new voice of contemporary jazz and world music.
She will be performing at the London Latin Jazz Fest with some of London’s leading jazz and lusophone musicians in a quintet including collaborators Jansen Santana and Greg Sanders.
Wednesday, October 08th, 2025 – (8pm)
This special event presents a reflection of the story of the latin vibraphone sextet. Under the direction of Colombian composer and vibraphone virtuoso Dorance Lorza & Sexteto Café explores the history of the instrument as it evolved from the 1940’s Latin boom in New York, through the transitional form of big band to small combo, the development of boogaloo and salsa.
Formed in 1996, Sexteto Café is one of the UK’s longest running salsa bands and is one of the pioneering orchestra’s in the worldwide “salsa con vibes” revival in the 1990s. Inspired by the small combo sound of 1960’s/70’s New York groups such as Joe Cuba Sextet/New Swing Sextet, Sexteto Café offered a new dimension to the tune-and-then-swing format that was favoured by big brass, latin orchestras at the time. With nine studio albums, their most recent being Circles of Time (2022), the Sexteto’s signature sound can be categorised under salsa dura, latin jazz, mambo, cha cha cha and cumbia, and is regularly featured on Colombian and international Latin radio.
Sexteto Café is one of the UK’s longest running groups active within the vibrancy and excitement of the London salsa scene. They formed in 1996 and they were the pioneering orchestra in the worldwide “salsa con vibes” revival of the late 1990s. The Sexteto were one of the first groups in Europe to favour the small combo salsa sound of the 1960s and 1970s salsa groups like Joe Cuba Sextet / New Swing Sextet.
Thursday, October 09th, 2025 – (8pm)
Brisa is an artist from Peru, and her music fuses the essence of Latin American folk with Jazz improvisation and folk intimacy. Her sound formed during her studies in London, where a confluence of musical influences came together with her heritage inheritance.
Brisa is consolidated in the lyricism of Latin America and constructs Folklore, Jazz and Magical Realism into a comprehensive sonic world and makes the mundane into fantastical experiences. In 2025 she released her Jazz-Bolero EP Del Mar y Sus Recuerdos – a project exploring memory, love and loss, and has begun evolving a collection of new songs that blend folkloric textures with the captivating magic of storytelling.
Brisa is a member of Tomorrow’s Warriors with whom she has performed with musicians from across the UK, and will present her poetic universe in support of Sílvia Pérez Cruz at La Linea Festival. She will perform at the London Latin Jazz Fest with a quintet of some of the most lauded and in demand young musicians in the UK.
Friday, October 10th, 2025 – (6pm & 9pm)
The London Latin Jazz Fest is delighted to host two performances by the most illustrious Cuban collective, Interactivo de Cuba Quintet, led by renowned pianist, singer, and composer Roberto Carcassés. The sound created by Interactivo is a defining sound of a generation in Havana, and throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Interactivo has transformed Cuban music into a genre that mixes jazz, timba, funk, son, and hip-hop, taking audiences on a seamless and evolving journey through their performances.
With an enduring commitment to the improvisational spirit of jazz music, the collective has filled Cuba’s largest theatre, travelled the world from Fuji Rock to MasiMas to Glastonbury’s Latin stage, and won two awards at the Cubadisco. A “very Cuban cousin of Acid Jazz,” Interactivo is dedicated to collaboration, and has performed with sometimes as many as 30 musicians on stage, cultivating new Cuban stars such as Cimafunk, Brenda Navarrete and Rodney Barreto along the way.
Saturday, October 11th, 2025 – (6pm & 9pm)
AfroCuba: Jazz Sessions are a festival highpoint, designed for an improvisation dialogue between Afro-Latin musical traditions and the unfolding UK jazz scenes. Cuban percussion virtuoso Hammadi Valdés (Chucho Valdés) is joined by their acclaimed Afrocuban folklore percussionists with drummer and producer Sam Barrell Jones (Obongjayar, Nubya Garcia, Binker Golding) and his trio. There will be just one day to rehearse, so the emphasis will be on spontaneous musical conversation blending Cubans ancestral rhythms with the contemporary UK jazz tradition.
Hammadi Valdés is a Grammy award-winning percussionist from Havana who has collaborated with everyone from Chucho Valdés to Carlos Acosta’s Tocororo ballet. Sam Barrell Jones is a groundbreaking London-based drummer and producer, well known for his collaborations with top UK jazz and grime artists, leading his own projects and going on international tours with his trio.
