Music of Baltimore - Venues

Venues

Many of Baltimore's nightclubs and other local music venues are in Fells Point and Federal Hill. One music field guide points to Fell's Point's Cat's Eye Pub, Full Moon Saloon, Fletcher's Bar, and Bertha's as particularly notable, in addition to a number of others, most famously including the Sportsmen's Lounge, which was a major jazz venue in the 1960s, when it was owned by football player Lenny Moore.

Many of the most legendary music venues in Baltimore have been shut down, including most of the shops, churches, bars and other destinations on the legendary Pennsylvania Avenue, center for the city's jazz scene. The Royal Theater, once one of the premiere destinations for African American performers on the East Coast, is marked only by a simple plaque, the theater itself having been demolished in 1971. A statue of Billie Holiday remains on Pennsylvania Avenue, however, between Lafayette and Lanvale, with a plaque that reads I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I am playing a horn. I try to improvise. What comes out is what I feel.

There are six major concert halls in Baltimore. The Lyric Opera House is modeled after the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam, and was reopened after several years of renovations in 1982, the same year the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall opened. Designed by Pietro Belluschi, The Meyerhoff Symphony Hall is a permanent home for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Belluschi also designed the Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College, which opened in 1962. The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Auditorium, located at the Baltimore Museum of Art, also opened in 1982, and hosts concerts by the Baltimore Chamber Music Society. Johns Hopkins University's Shriver Hall and the Peabody's Miriam A. Friedberg are also important concert venues, the latter being the oldest still in use.