Village Vanguard
The world's most prestigious jazz club, this West Village standout is still the best place in the city to hear the rhythms and melodies that put America on the world musical map. Set on a quiet strip of Seventh Avenue, the Vanguard is an intimate, basement-level club full of air sanctified as a world-class wine cellar. John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, and just about every other jazz luminary to bop through New York in the last century played here at one time or another. These days, jazz curator Wynton Marsalis is a regular. The Vanguard is no staid jazz hall of fame, however; it showcases the best new and emerging talent in New York in a club that still feels musically vital. This place is serious.
