Silvana is a great place for any evening you want to just kick it, see some decent live music, eat some great Mediterranean food and smoke a hookah. It has it all.
The local music scene delivered at Silvana varies from night to night but generally I have never been disappointed. What makes Silvana special, in our opinion, is it is a equal opportunity club. They let young and new to New York musicians play. Once I saw a band comprised on Julliard students and another time a band with a professor of music history from Columbia. Sometimes it’s the gong show and other times a band like Van Davis Shows up! Sometimes Peter Galperin plays a set! I’ve seen Megan Talay and Zack Jones light up the room. You just never know.
This venue favors two kinds of gigs, intimate 1-3 pieces folk/jazz and up to 4 pieces of high volume power rock. Why? well, you can control the smaller mellow sounds and the full on, it doesn’t matter that much. The Acoustics in the basement are OK, I don’t love the venue for the quality of sound. If you play here, bring your own sound guy to work your panel as the levels are close to impossible to get right for a set. You’ll give up voice for instrument volumes in an effort the find depth only to revisit the lever each song. Basically, the acoustics are the problem, not you.