Le Poison Rouge is an underground multi-genre music venue with a convoluted history before its most recent overhaul by acoustic engineers and architects. It was originally an adopted basement performance space of a flophouse in the late ’50s called the Village Gate, which was an iconic jazz club in its own right. It was then repurposed as a two-story CVS Pharmacy before being purchased and renovated by a well-known acoustician and architect - John Storyk of Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG). The goal of this new renovation was to bring contemporary classical music into the club setting while having the entire space rearrangeable for a standing audience rock or DJ set.
CBGBs was originally a hole-in-the-wall dive bar in Manhattans East Village. It then transitioned into a fairly hardcore biker bar before starting to host country/bluegrass shows inside the bar. CBGBs stands for Country, Blue Grass, and the Blues - but was co-oped quickly by the hardcore punk movement in the early 1980s. This iconic venue was not more than a narrow dive bar with a stage at the end of it. A lighting and sound board were slapdashidly built by stacking couches on top of the bar and the ticket office was simply the owners' desk just inside the door. There were two rules for artists playing here: they had to bring and move all their own equipment and could only play original songs. No part of CBGBs was glamorous, yet it was the site for many significant moments in music history. The Ramones played their first show here, the Talking Heads cut their teeth, and The Police played one of their first American gigs there. This was the birthplace of the hardcore punk scene in New York.
Carnegie Hall needs little introduction. It is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music, holding 3 concert halls. The hall I will be representing is Stern Auditorium, a 5-story tall, 2,800-seat space. This hall opened in 1891 and today remains quite true to its original form.
