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.
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.
WAIKIKI SHELL
Edwin Bauer's 1956 white concrete clamshell facing 2,400 seated and 6,000 on the lawn in Kapi'olani Park. Diamond Head behind the stage. Site of Hawaiian sovereignty concerts since the 1970s.
MERRIE MONARCH FESTIVAL
Most prestigious hula competition in the world. Annual since 1964 the week after Easter, in honour of King David Kalākaua. Hālau hula from Hawai'i, the US mainland, Japan and Aotearoa compete over four nights in Hilo.
BISHOP MUSEUM (HAWAIIAN HALL)
1889 Romanesque-revival hall built from local lava-stone. Three storeys of prized koa-wood display cases, a full-size sperm-whale skeleton suspended overhead. Kani ka pila slack-key sessions among the artefacts.