Music, theatre and comedy

New York hears more live music on an ordinary Tuesday than most cities manage in a month, across every scale from an opera house seating nearly four thousand to a basement where the audience sits with their knees against the stage.

What follows sticks to institutions with a long record. Bars and clubs in this city open and close constantly, and older writing on New York nightlife is mostly a list of addresses where something used to be — so the places named here are the ones that have been in the same building for decades and show every sign of continuing.

Carnegie Hall

On 57th Street at Seventh Avenue, built by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie and opened in 1891 with Tchaikovsky appearing as a guest conductor at the inaugural concerts. Since then it has had Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, the Beatles, Billie Holiday and more or less every classical musician of consequence.

There are three halls:

• The Isaac Stern Auditorium, the main hall, seating around 2,800 across five steep levels. The upper balcony involves a serious climb, and lifts exist for anyone who would rather not. It is named for the violinist whose campaign saved the building from demolition in the 1950s and led to its landmark protection in 1964 — without him there would be an office block on the site.
• Zankel Hall, beneath the main auditorium, seating around 600. It was converted into a cinema in 1959 and restored as a concert hall in 2003.
• Weill Recital Hall, the small one, seating under 300. It has existed since the building opened and was renamed in the 1980s after the banker Sanford Weill. Older accounts describe it as the newest of the three, opened in 2004 — that is Zankel, and the two get confused constantly.

The acoustics are the reason musicians care about the place. They were damaged by a concrete slab installed under the stage during a 1980s renovation, which took years of argument to identify and was removed in 1995.

There is also a small museum and archive on the history of the hall, and guided tours run on most days during the season — the cheapest way to see the auditorium and a good hour.

Two corrections to older writing about the surroundings. The Russian Tea Room next door, founded in the 1920s by former members of the Russian Imperial Ballet, closed in 2002 but reopened in 2006 and is still there; accounts describing it as closed with hopes of revival are two decades behind. And Steinway Hall moved off 57th Street in 2016 to Sixth Avenue, so the showroom of pianos is no longer around the corner.

Lincoln Center

A campus of concert halls around a plaza and fountain on the Upper West Side, built in the 1960s and the base for several of the country's major companies:

• The Metropolitan Opera, in the largest house, with the Chagall murals visible through the glass front at night.
• The New York Philharmonic, in David Geffen Hall, which was gutted and rebuilt with new acoustics and reopened in 2022 after decades of complaints about the old room.
• New York City Ballet, the resident company, founded by Balanchine, with the Nutcracker every December.
• The Juilliard School, whose student recitals are frequently free and very good.
• Jazz at Lincoln Center, a short distance away at Columbus Circle, with a concert hall and a club looking out over Central Park.

One correction: the Joffrey Ballet, which older accounts list as resident here, moved to Chicago in 1995.

The practical point about the Met Opera is that it sells cheap rush tickets and standing-room places, and that the house is so large that the inexpensive upper seats still hear everything — the acoustics do not punish thrift in the way the view does.

Jazz

The clubs worth naming are the ones that have outlasted every change in the city around them.

The Village Vanguard, a wedge-shaped basement on Seventh Avenue South, has been running since 1935 and is the most recorded room in jazz — a long list of canonical live albums were made down those stairs. It is small, the seats are cramped, the sound is extraordinary, and there is a strict no-talking convention that the staff enforce.

The Blue Note, on West 3rd Street, is the bigger and more comfortable option, books international names, and is correspondingly expensive.

Birdland, in midtown near the theatres, takes its name from Charlie Parker and runs several sets a night across two rooms.

Smalls and its sister room in the Village are where the younger players work, with late sets that run towards dawn.

Two things to know. Most clubs charge admission plus a minimum spend on food or drink, so the real cost is higher than the advertised one. And the later sets are cheaper, less crowded and often better, because the musicians have warmed up and the tourists have gone to bed.

Comedy

The Comedy Cellar, on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, is the one. A genuine basement, a low ceiling, tables jammed together, and a reputation as the room where established comedians try new material unannounced — so the bill as advertised bears little relation to who actually appears. Booking ahead is essential and there is a drinks minimum.

The Comic Strip on Second Avenue has been running since the 1970s and gave early stages to a long list of people who became famous.

Carolines on Broadway, which older writing recommends as the big Times Square room, closed in 2022.

Beyond the clubs, the city has a large and cheap improvised and sketch comedy scene in small theatres downtown, where tickets cost a fraction of the club prices.

Harlem, and the other rooms

The Apollo Theater on 125th Street is where a remarkable share of twentieth-century American music was launched, and its amateur night — the format that discovered Ella Fitzgerald among many others — still runs weekly with an audience that is vocally unsparing. Tours are available when the theatre is dark.

Radio City Music Hall, at Rockefeller Center, is worth seeing for the Art Deco interior whatever is on; it runs tours, and the Rockettes' Christmas show is an institution.

The Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side and Brooklyn Steel and Webster Hall are the mid-sized rock and pop rooms; Madison Square Garden and the Brooklyn arena take the large tours. Madison Square Garden, incidentally, is neither square nor a garden nor on Madison, and has moved several times.

Churches in Harlem hold gospel services on Sunday mornings, and some welcome visitors. These are acts of worship rather than performances, and the ordinary courtesies apply — arrive early, dress properly, do not photograph the congregation, and stay for the whole service rather than leaving after the music.

Theatre

Broadway, Off-Broadway and how to get a ticket are covered under Times Square and Broadway. The short version is that the box office in person is the cheapest route, most shows run a free online lottery for seats, and most theatres are dark on Mondays.

Finding out what is on

The one genuinely necessary piece of advice: check listings in the week of the visit rather than relying on anything written in advance. The institutions named above are permanent; what they are presenting on any given night is not, and the interesting things are frequently announced late.

Free and cheap music is more plentiful than visitors expect — Juilliard recitals, lunchtime concerts in midtown churches, the summer programmes in Central Park, and subway platform performers who are in several cases properly good and auditioned for the privilege.