Surely, churches were built by architects with spell and music in mind, from the beginning, or at least since the middle ages. Unfortunately the engineering of acoustics was not well developed, and very often you will find that reverberation is excessive, but you may well compensate that effect by bringing a thousand people to the concert! :)

It's very cruel to see those modern halls recently built, which cost a fortune, and where everything is foam, cloth, carpet.. and huge amplifiers(deformers?) and speakers(shouters?). Two years ago I was invited to sing jazz at a place like those, and had to sing behind a microphone. I kept the mic at approx. 15 inches, the sound engineer made his magic, and I sang very comfortably. I would prefer to sing without amplifiers, but then you have two alternatives: 1) compete with piano, brasses, percussion and basses and be defeated, or 2) sing like Pavarotti at the opera house, which is not appropiate for jazz. When heavy instruments are present at a pop or folk concert, it seems that we are stuck to electric sound.

Un abrazo,
Andrés