September 3, 2026

Words: Andrew Wasserstein

Photography: Avesh Gaur

This New Delhi Jazz Club Takes Its Cues From Gothic Cathedrals

Founded in 2015 by renowned pianist Arjun Sagar Gupta, The Piano Man has become one of India’s leading music venues for live performance and jazz, with locations in Gurugram and New Delhi’s posh Safdarjung Enclave. For its third and largest location in the capital’s Malviya Nagar neighborhood, Gupta aimed to evolve the brand and partnered with his longtime creative collaborator Amith Chhabra, founder of Studio LCD. While the previous interiors took inspiration from New Orleans’s historic Preservation Hall, this time Chhabra and Gupta looked back a few centuries, drawing on the spatial drama of Europe’s medieval Gothic cathedrals.

“We wanted to bring that same sense of awe into a modern music venue and have the architecture participate in the performance itself,” explains Chhabra. “Cathedrals were among the earliest immersive spaces, understanding scale, anticipation, acoustics, and emotion long before those words became part of the contemporary design vocabulary.”

Gothic Architecture Meets Modern Jazz

Empty theater with round tables and wooden chairs on the main floor, two balcony levels with seating, and ornate wooden box seats in the center above the stage.
A second-floor and suspended mezzanine wrap the 8,500-square-foot venue, preserving sightlines to the stage.

To increase guest capacity, Studio LCD built upward within the 8,500-square-foot space to create a structurally complex and carefully engineered seating arrangement. Akin to an opera house, the demi-lune venue features stage-side seating and two curving upper tiers: a second-floor level and a mezzanine suspended below. The layout preserves the sightlines, openness, acoustic quality and participation of each guest during the performance.

The alluring atmosphere of The Piano Man Malviya Nagar is brought to life through a layered material palette, period pieces and careful proportions. Modern, Gothic and ecclesiastical references form a cohesive language that avoids pastiche, including carved natural oak furniture and wall paneling, wrought-iron balustrades and staircase railings, metallic iconography and church pew seating systems that trace the venue’s curving interiors. 

A signature bar greets patrons at the first-floor entrance, while its counterpart occupies the second floor. Both extend the Gothic vocabulary, with carved trefoil pointed arches framing custom stained-glass light boxes that cast a warm glow across each space. The sculptural centerpiece of the venue is the Studio LCD-designed chandelier that hangs above the stage from a vaulted ceiling. Composed of 564 individual trumpets, each fitted with a bulb, the fixture responds to the venue’s soaring volumes.

“We weren’t interested in creating a themed environment,” says Chhabra. “Our goal was to balance reverence with contemporary expression, distilling the emotional qualities of Gothic architecture into an interactive venue where music performance becomes an experience.”

Walk Through The Piano Man Malviya Nagar 

  • Elegant, dimly lit theater interior with wooden balconies, ornate chandelier, and a bar in the background. Spotlights illuminate a person in a booth below.
    Studio LCD’s chandelier, composed of 564 individually lit trumpets, descends through the venue’s soaring central volume.
  • Wooden pews with small red lamps on each armrest sit in a dimly lit room with ornate paneling, black walls, and a black-and-white striped floor.
    Authentic church pews line the curving walls on elevated platforms, punctuated by individual red-shaded lamps.
  • A dimly lit jazz club with wooden tables and chairs, a staircase, and a red grand piano on stage near blue curtains.
    Thonet chairs and café tables offer a lighter jazz-club counterpoint to the venue’s elaborate carved-oak architecture.
  • Dimly lit bar with ornate wooden paneling, arched mirrors, a row of wooden stools, and three round table lamps on the counter.
    At the second-floor bar, black-and-white striped stone flooring meets hardwood along an inlaid brass border.
  • A wooden bar counter with ornate paneling faces shelves of liquor bottles and a stained glass window. Warm lighting and a retro lamp create a cozy atmosphere.
    Trefoil pointed arches fitted with custom stained glass form an ecclesiastical backdrop to suspended brass bottle shelving.
  • A curved dark wall features three gold clover-shaped fixtures with soft lighting casting warm reflections on the wooden floor.
    Quatrefoil motifs become sculptural wall openings, casting pools of warm light onto the hardwood floor.
  • A red grand piano sits on a wooden stage beside an ornate balcony and staircase in a dimly lit theater.
    Carved oak paneling and Gothic-inspired ironwork meet brass bands inscribed with the names of music legends.
  • Two musicians perform on a dimly lit stage in a vintage-style theater with empty tables and chairs arranged on the main floor.
    Tiered seating preserves clear sightlines to the stage from multiple levels.
  • Dimly lit jazz club interior with empty tables and chairs, staircase on the left, and spotlights on the ceiling. Names of musicians carved above, including Louis Armstrong and Wayne Shorter.
    Striped stone flooring, carved oak, and brass accents continue through the venue’s shadowed circulation spaces.
  • A spotlight shines on an open grand piano on a stage with a rug, while small red lights illuminate empty seats in a dark, intimate venue.
    A spotlight falls across Arjun Sagar Gupta’s personal grand piano, a permanent fixture on the stage.

Project Team: Amith Chhabra, Mohan Jyoti Nath and Kaushik Dikshit of Studio LCD. AV Integration AM Integrated: Aashish Mahindru. Civil Contractor: SRBS Interior. Structural Engineer: BMSF Design Consultants (P) Ltd. MEP Consultants & Execution: PS Air Solutions Pvt. Ltd. + SRBS Interior. Acoustic Consultant: Anutone Acoustics Limited. Stained Glass: Khaas Glass. Bar Consultant: Speed X. Kitchen Consultant: Wang Hospitality Equipment Private Limited.

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