The Long Listen · series

Listening rooms

Rooms worth the trip: concert halls, listening bars, the places where the room is the instrument.

Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

4 so far

In this series

Panoramic view inside Union Chapel: red-brick Gothic arches, stained glass, long wooden pews and a stage set up beneath the pulpit01
Listening rooms

How to hear Union Chapel, the big London room that plays small

Two five-star reviews a week apart said the same thing about a church in Islington designed to seat 1,600: it shrinks to the size of a front room.…

10 November 2026 · 7 min read
The Elbphilharmonie at dusk seen from the front, its glass upper storeys lit from within above the brick warehouse base, the arched Plaza window glowing under an orange sky02
Listening rooms

The Elbphilharmonie at ten

Hamburg's glass wave on a brick warehouse turns ten on 11 January 2027, and the anniversary season is as good a reason as any to go. How to get a…

21 October 2026 · 5 min read
The front of Chigusa, a jazz kissa on a Yokohama street corner, its Modern Jazz Chigusa sign over the door and a painted mural on the upper storey03
Listening rooms

Is anyone actually listening?

London got three listening bars in eight weeks and a published backlash. Here is a five-part test for telling a real one from a bar with a turntable…

21 October 2026 · 5 min read
Spiritland's listening room at the Barbican: two large horn speakers either side of an amp rack and reel-to-reel machines, cream chairs and a red carpet in warm red light04
Listening rooms

The Barbican just got a listening bar

Spiritland opened a hundred-seat room on Level 2 of London's concrete arts centre on 20 October 2026, with a pair of Living Voice R252s and an album…

21 October 2026 · 4 min read

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Photographs on this page: Photo: Nicolas Fischer, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Photo: Syced, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; Photo: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons