How To Find Great Jazz in New York City

Check out Birdland. Now located north of Greenwich Village on West 44 Street, Birdland originally opened a few blocks up Broadway in 1949—with headliner Charlie Parker.

Head north to Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola in Columbus Circle’s Time Warner Center. The club, which is run by Wynton Marsalis’s influential organization, Jazz at Lincoln Center, features after-hours sets five days a week.

Continue up Broadway to the Upper West Side club Smoke, famous for its Monday night jam sessions.

Swing by the Museum of Natural History’s live jazz program, Starry Nights, held in its stunning Rose Center for Earth and Space on the first Friday of every month.

Check out jazz clubs in Harlem, like the storied Lenox Lounge, which has endured since 1939 and hosted such legends as Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, as well as historic Harlem literary regulars like James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.

If you’re feeling flush, see Woody Allen and his New Orleans jazz band at Café Carlyle in the Upper East Side’s swank Carlyle Hotel. The group plays there many Monday nights—but be sure to call ahead and check. It’s expensive, but if they’re playing, it’ll be worth it.

Ask around. Just walk into any jazz club and ask either your fellow patrons or the bartenders for suggestions. True lovers of jazz are always happy to share what they know.