12 live music venues
Working rooms, not a tour list — pick a venue for its real, live upcoming shows.
Birdland
The Birdland name dates to a basement club that opened on Broadway in December 1949, took its name from Charlie Parker's nickname "Bird," and closed in 1965; the West 44th Street club revived it and has held this address since 1996.
Birdland is run as a full table-service jazz club with assigned seating rather than an open standing-room floor, so where you're seated affects your view of the bandstand.
Mercury Lounge
Mercury Lounge opened in 1993 inside a Lower East Side storefront that had been a tombstone seller's shop since 1933, run by the team that later built the Bowery Ballroom.
The main room is a small standing-room floor with no assigned seating, so get there early if you want to be near the stage.
Bowery Ballroom
The Bowery Ballroom opened in 1998 inside a 1929 building designed by Henry Creighton Ingalls for the Tree-Mark Shoe Co., whose name is still engraved across the top of the facade.
The room has a general-admission standing floor plus a mezzanine above with some cafe-style seating, so heading upstairs is the way to get a view over the crowd.
Irving Plaza
The Polish Army Veterans of America bought 17 Irving Place in 1948 and ran it as a community center that hosted union meetings, folk dancing and People's Songs hootenannies with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie; it opened as a rock venue in July 1978 and the veterans' association still owns it.
The main floor is standing-room with a wraparound mezzanine above, rebuilt in the 2019-21 renovation with standing box positions, so upstairs is where to go for a view over a packed room.
Gramercy Theatre
The Gramercy Theatre was built in 1937 as the Gramercy Park Theatre, a Streamline Moderne movie house designed by Charles A. Sandblom, and showed films for most of the following sixty years before becoming a concert venue.
The room keeps a rarity among midsize NYC venues — a general-admission standing floor plus limited loge seating handed out first-come — so where you stand or sit changes the show a lot.
Hammerstein Ballroom
Built in 1906 by Oscar Hammerstein I as the Manhattan Opera House to rival the Met, the room hosted the last occasion on which David Bowie sang his own songs in public, three numbers at a benefit in November 2006.
As a converted opera auditorium rather than a fixed-seat theater, the main floor is general-admission standing, with two low balconies above for anyone who wants a seated overview.
Sony Hall
Sony Hall occupies the Paramount Hotel basement where Billy Rose opened the Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in December 1938; after it closed in 1951 the space was a skating rink and then an off-Broadway house before reopening as a concert venue in March 2018.
The room sits below street level in a basement space that still reflects its nightclub-era design rather than a purpose-built modern club, with a mix of standing floor and some seating.
Beacon Theatre
The Beacon Theatre opened as a movie palace on Christmas Eve 1929 and hosted the Allman Brothers Band for multi-night runs in most years between 1989 and the band's final concert there in 2014.
Unlike the city's standing-room rock clubs, the Beacon is a fully seated theater spread across three levels, so every ticket comes with an assigned seat.
Theater at MSG
The Theater at Madison Square Garden opened in 1968 as the Felt Forum beneath the main arena, and it hosted a young Mike Tyson's 14th professional fight in 1985.
The theater sits beneath the main Madison Square Garden arena and is reconfigured for each show, so its capacity and room shape can vary a lot between events. It also changes sponsor names every few years, so check the address rather than the name on a ticket.
Terminal 5
Terminal 5 opened in October 2007 in a Hell's Kitchen building that had spent years as the nightclub Exit, which police raided and closed in February 2003 before a judge ordered it reopened six weeks later.
The venue spans three floors with two wraparound balconies and a roof deck, so sound and sightlines differ significantly depending on which level you're on.
The Apollo
Reopened under the Apollo name in January 1934, the theater hosted one of its earliest Amateur Nights that November, when a 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald entered as a dancer, sang instead, and won.
The Apollo is a working theater rather than a museum, and its 125th Street auditorium closed in mid-2025 for the largest renovation in its history, with programming moved to the organization's stages at the Victoria Theater nearby — check which address a ticket names before you travel.
St. George Theatre
Opened on December 4, 1929 as a 2,800-seat movie-and-vaudeville palace with a Spanish and Italian Baroque interior, the theater was rescued from decades of failed conversions in 2004 by dance teacher Rosemary Cappozalo and her daughters.
The theater stands a short uphill walk from the St. George ferry terminal, so a show here pairs naturally with the free Staten Island Ferry ride past the Statue of Liberty.