BASILICA HUDSON
An 1880s riveted-iron foundry on the Hudson River, repurposed by Melissa Auf der Maur into a year-round arts venue. Industrial cathedral, all forged steel and broken light.
THE CAVERNS
A 333-ft-deep subterranean amphitheatre in Big Mouth Cave on the Cumberland Plateau. Home of Bluegrass Underground, where stalactites do the reverb work.
CARNEGIE HALL
1891 Italian Renaissance Revival concert hall on 7th Avenue. Plaster-and-wood acoustics so balanced engineers still bring tape recorders just to hear the room.
WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
Frank Gehry's stainless-steel origami above Bunker Hill, opened 2003. Yasuhisa Toyota acoustics, Douglas-fir interior, home of the LA Philharmonic.
RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE
Two 300-ft red sandstone monoliths framing a stage at 6,450 ft elevation, west of Denver. A natural amphitheatre 300 million years in the making.
RYMAN AUDITORIUM
1892 revival-meeting tabernacle, home of the Grand Ole Opry 1943-1974. Curved pine pews, brick walls, original stage. The Mother Church of Country Music.
VILLAGE VANGUARD
Wedge-shaped basement jazz club on 7th Avenue South, opened 1935. 123-capacity. More than 100 live records cut here, Coltrane and Bill Evans among them.
HOUSE OF BLUES NEW ORLEANS
French Quarter flagship of the House of Blues chain since 1994. Every wall a quilt of Mississippi-Delta outsider art. Sunday Gospel Brunch is the room's signature.
NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL AT FORT ADAMS
George Wein's 1954 jazz festival, the world's first, held inside the granite ramparts of an 1841 coastal artillery fort overlooking Narragansett Bay.
BURNING MAN
70,000-person temporary city on an ancient lakebed in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Built and burned annually. Robot Heart's sunrise sets are the world's most-photographed dawn in electronic music.
TEMPLO MAYOR SESSIONS
Occasional sound and music sessions held at the Templo Mayor archaeological site at the heart of Mexico City. Mesoamerican pre-Hispanic music programmed on the Aztec ruins.
ZAMNA TULUM
Eight-week-long jungle festival series in the Yucatán, Dec-Feb. Cenote-blue lighting, Mayan-stone-stage references, the post-2018 Tulum melodic techno blueprint.
CHICHÉN ITZÁ (EL CASTILLO)
1,000-year-old Mayan pyramid whose central staircase produces a chirped echo. Clap once at the foot of the steps; the pyramid returns the call of the resident quetzal bird.
THEATRO MUNICIPAL DO RIO DE JANEIRO
1909 Belle Époque opera house in Cinelândia, modelled on the Paris Opéra. Stained-glass dome, gilded foyer, plush-red horseshoe seating.
SAMBÓDROMO DA MARQUÊS DE SAPUCAÍ
Oscar Niemeyer's 1984 concrete parade canyon, purpose-built for Rio Carnival samba schools to march their 4,000-strong baterias past at 130 BPM.
WARUNG BEACH CLUB
Bali-architecture beach club on the Brazilian Atlantic coast, opened 2002. Wood-and-bamboo build, Funktion-One rig, Tale of Us / DGTL Brasil residencies.
TEATRO COLÓN
1908 Buenos Aires opera house, ranked among the world's top five acoustic spaces. 1.7-second reverb, Carrara marble, Slavonian oak, horseshoe seating.
TEATRO MUNICIPAL DE SANTIAGO
1857 Neoclassical opera house in central Santiago, survived two earthquakes and one fire. Home of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago.
TEMPLE OF THE MOON (HUAYNA PICCHU)
Ceremonial cave carved into the back face of Huayna Picchu, behind Machu Picchu. Flat-stone altar, granite walls, near-twenty-second reverb on a single pututu blast.
SACRED VALLEY FREQUENCY
The loose circuit of ecstatic-dance halls and ceremonial gatherings across Peru's Sacred Valley: La Columna Yucay, Apudance, full-moon circles at Ollantaytambo.
FÁBRICA DE ARTE CUBANO (FAC)
X Alfonso's 1940s converted cooking-oil factory in Vedado, Havana. Five rooms, eight events a night, the most important Caribbean music space of the 2010s-2020s.
THE BAMBOO CATHEDRAL
A 1km tunnel of arched bamboo on the old Chaguaramas military road, Trinidad. Planted by the US Navy in WWII, now a naturally-vaulted nave that creaks and clicks like a wind chime.
MASSEY HALL
1894 Moorish-Revival lyric hall in downtown Toronto. The room where Parker, Gillespie, Mingus, Powell and Roach cut Jazz at Massey Hall in 1953.
BANFF CENTRE FOR ARTS AND CREATIVITY
Mountain arts campus on Tunnel Mountain in Banff National Park. Eric Harvie Theatre + Rolston Recital Hall. Composers write residency pieces looking at Mount Rundle.
LOST BEACH CLUB
Cliffside open-air club in Montañita on Ecuador's Pacific coast. Built from sand, bamboo and Funktion-One. South America's secret cathedral of sound.
ELSEWHERE
Three-room Bushwick venue opened 2017, ex-warehouse, rooftop, two indoor floors. Heir to the New York underground after the closure of Output and 285 Kent.
TERRA BLUES
Greenwich Village basement blues club on Bleecker Street, open since 1992. Two sets every night, acoustic at 7pm, electric at 10pm. The longest continuous blues residency in New York City.
KINGSTON MINES
Chicago's oldest continuously-operating blues club, open since 1968 in Lincoln Park. Two stages running simultaneously, one rotates while the other plays. Open until 4am.
SMALLS JAZZ CLUB
60-cap basement jazz club on West 10th Street, open since 1994. The most-recorded session room in the New York jazz scene of the past 25 years. SmallsLIVE streams every set.
PAPPY AND HARRIET'S
Roadhouse and music venue in Pioneertown, California, a 1940s Western film set on the high Mojave above Joshua Tree. Open since 1982, 250-cap room. Paul McCartney and Robert Plant have played here unannounced.
THE GORGE AMPHITHEATRE
27,500-cap natural amphitheatre carved into the cliffs above the Columbia River Gorge in central Washington State. Opened 1986. Routinely voted the most beautiful concert venue in North America.