Brazil 4 rooms
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.
Teatro Amazonas
Teatro Amazonas is a nineteenth-century opera house in the historic centre of Manaus, deep in the Brazilian Amazon.
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.
Warung Beach Club
Bali-architecture beach club on the Brazilian Atlantic coast, opened 2002 and closed for good after its final weekend on 6 June 2026.
Canada 2 rooms
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.
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.
Mexico 3 rooms
Chichén Itzá (El Castillo)
El Castillo at Chichén Itzá is a Maya pyramid, not a music venue. A handclap at the foot of its staircase returns a chirp-like echo often compared to a quetzal.
Templo Mayor
Templo Mayor is the excavated Mexica twin temple beside Mexico City's Zócalo, with a museum. A place to visit, not a named music venue.
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.
Peru 2 rooms
Temple of the Moon (Huayna Picchu)
The Temple of the Moon is a set of caves with fine Inca stonework on the north face of Huayna Picchu, near Machu Picchu. A place to visit, not a music venue.
The Sacred Valley
The Sacred Valley in Peru is a region where travellers find informal ecstatic-dance and ceremonial gatherings. A place, not a named or bookable venue.
United States 18 rooms
Basilica Hudson
An 1880 forge and foundry for steel railway wheels on the Hudson River, turned into a non-profit arts centre in 2010 by Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone.
Burning Man
A temporary city of about 71,500 people on the Black Rock Desert playa in Nevada, built and burned each year. The next edition, Spellbound, runs 29 August to 6 September 2027.
Carnegie Hall
The 1891 concert hall at 881 Seventh Avenue and 57th Street, New York.
Elsewhere
A five-room venue in a former Bushwick furniture factory at 599 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn, open since Halloween 2017.
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is an outdoor amphitheatre in a natural canyon in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. It opened in 1922 and has 17,500 seats.
House of Blues New Orleans
French Quarter flagship of the House of Blues chain since January 1994, at 225 Decatur Street. About 1,000 capacity, all ages with a ticket, every show sold through Ticketmaster.
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.
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.
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.
Preservation Hall
Preservation Hall is a small jazz room at 726 St Peter Street in the New Orleans French Quarter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Gorge Amphitheatre
27,500-cap natural amphitheatre carved into the cliffs above the Columbia River Gorge in central Washington State. Opened 1986.
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.
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Frank Gehry's stainless-steel origami above Bunker Hill, opened 2003. Minoru Nagata and Yasuhisa Toyota acoustics, Douglas-fir interior, home of the LA Philharmonic.