Pick a Day

Music History Events: Openings and Unveilings

December 15, 1949 The Birdland jazz club, named after Charlie Parker, opens in New York City. It quickly becomes a hotspot, with Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and many other luminaries performing there until it closes in 1965.

September 27, 1880 The Guildhall School of Music is opened in a disused London warehouse in the city. It has 62 part-time students.

January 5, 1875 Paris' Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated. Fourteen years previously, Parisian workers attempting to lay the concrete foundations of the opera house uncovered a vast swampy lake. That lake swirling beneath the building and its surrounding cellars inspire Gaston Leroux to write The Phantom of the Opera in 1910.