Joseph Patelson Music House

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This venue is closed.

Joseph Patelson was an 18-year-old amateur musician and composer when he took a job as a clerk at the Half-Price Music Shop in 1929. Within a decade, he was running the place. Though Patelson has since passed on, you can still count on the wildly informed staff here to sound off on all things sheet music, both new and used. Now ensconced in a creaky nineteenth-century carriage house directly across the street from Carnegie Hall’s stage entrance, Patelson’s is a favorite among the classical-and-stage-music set, luminaries from which can be found perusing the shelves beneath august portraits of forebears like Gershwin, Puccini, and Schubert. Offerings are divided by instrument and further split into subsections like Theory, Biography, and History, while breezier selections of single-sheet show tunes (ranging from Cats to Bewitched) and jazz playbooks can be found toward the back of the store. Patelson’s also offers instrument repair and string and woodwind rentals, thanks to a partnership with former Sam Ash bigwig Jonathan Wright Watkins’s instrument business, Wright Music. — Alex Littlefield