Midtown Manhattan
3 music artists that Wikipedia ties to Midtown Manhattan, best known first. A tie, not always an origin
- Cole PorterComposer, songwriter · Stage & Screen
- Fabrizio MorettiMusician · Rock & Punk
- BlondshellMusician · Rock & Punk
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Music spots
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Venue
Carnegie Hall
1891Opened in 1891. By the 1900s Sergei Rachmaninoff was among those staging or performing their own music here, the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini frequently recorded in the Main Hall, and Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis are among the many jazz performers who have played here, per Wikipedia.
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Venue
The Town Hall
1921Opened in 1921 as a lecture hall, it became one of the city’s top music venues. Sergei Rachmaninoff appeared in the 1931–32 season of its Endowment Series and Lily Pons in 1938, and a Louis Armstrong concert here in 1947 led to the formation of Louis Armstrong and His All Stars, per Wikipedia.
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Venue
Palladium Ballroom
1946–1966“The home of the mambo”, per PalladiumMambo.com, on the northeast corner of Broadway and 53rd Street. It opened in 1946; in 1948 the Big Three, Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez and Machito, raised its standing, and their careers grew on the strength of their bookings there. A 1961 drug raid cost it its liquor license, and it closed in 1966, per Wikipedia.
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Venue
Birdland (the first club)
1949–1965Named for Charlie Parker, it opened just north of West 52nd Street in December 1949 with Harry Belafonte and Lennie Tristano on the bill. The Count Basie Orchestra was a regular booking and recorded Basie at Birdland here, and Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis appeared. It closed in 1965; today’s Birdland is on West 44th Street, per Wikipedia.
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Studio
Brill Building
1962By the early 1960s the building at Broadway and 49th Street held more than 160 music-business tenants, and songwriters including Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka and Paul Simon worked in its cramped rooms, per HISTORY. Wikipedia counts 165 music businesses in it by 1962.
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Venue
Radio City Music Hall
1984–1998The first MTV Video Music Awards were held here on 14 September 1984. Madonna came out of a 17-foot wedding cake to sing “Like a Virgin”, and Cyndi Lauper, the night’s most-nominated artist, won Best Female Video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, per Wikipedia. At the 40th Grammy Awards here on 25 February 1998, Erykah Badu and Fiona Apple both performed and won, per Wikipedia and the Recording Academy, and Ol' Dirty Bastard rushed the stage as Shawn Colvin took it to accept Song of the Year, per Wikipedia.
Wikipedia ↗ · Wikipedia 2 ↗ · Wikipedia 3 ↗ · Recording Academy ↗
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Moment
Times Square, “Empire State of Mind”
2009NYC Tourism counts Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” among the iconic hip-hop videos shot in Times Square. Hype Williams’s 2009 video cuts full-color shots of the two performing in Times Square into black-and-white New York, and ends with them on the red steps of the TKTS pavilion, per Wikipedia.
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More of Manhattan
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