Story by Guy Kelly, The Telegraph | The handful of stages that almost all musicians hope to grace one day is a small and exclusive club. New venues open regularly, but most of them are vibeless arenas paid for by the sale of their naming rights, or else gimmicky visual experiences. To the biggest acts, they probably look like any old stop on the road.
And so the top tier remains set. In pop and rock, New York’s Madison Square Gardens and Glastonbury Festival’s Pyramid Stage seem obvious, long-standing members. So too the versatile and still striking Sydney Opera House. In the worlds of classical and jazz, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall surely merit mention.
New names are seldom added, but that makes the most recent addition to that must-play list all the more noteworthy: the gap behind Bob Boilen’s old desk in an office building in Washington DC. The capacity is a few dozen, depending on whether the photocopiers can be moved. The lighting is of the industrial strip variety. The acoustics are surprisingly good. As for the performance space? Well, that’s tiny.
As everybody from Taylor Swift and Adele to Chaka Khan and Yo-Yo Ma could attest, over the past 16 years, NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series has metamorphosed from cult online muso content to a fully-fledged cultural phenomenon, in doing so becoming one of the most in-demand stages for artists of any size.
To those somehow unfamiliar, the set-up is mercifully brief to explain. A few times a week, a solo musician or band will visit the headquarters of NPR (National Public Radio) in the US capital to perform a lunchtime gig on the office floor. The backdrop is a now instantly recognisable, kaleidoscopic wall of bric-a-brac, and for 20-minutes or so the act holds court, vulnerable and engaged, in an environment unlike any other they normally play.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/when-taylor-swift-came-to-the-office-how-the-tiny-desk-concert-became-pop-s-biggest-stage/
Photo: Taylor Swift