Roxy Bar Presents: Pianist Michael Garin

Michael Garin plays a solo piano set as Roxy Bar’s resident pianist. His nightly approach treats the keyboard as both instrument and selector’s booth, moving through a deliberately broad stream of material that the venue says can include Shaggy, Om Kalthum, Rossini, Jobim, Zappa and Raymond Scott. Requests are part of the picture, as are Garin’s comic asides and occasional tap dancing from the piano bench. This is a post-work performance built around a pianist following his own connections between songs rather than a fixed band set.

Originally from Greenbelt, Maryland, Garin has been a New York nightlife mainstay for decades. He is a pianist, songwriter, singer, poet, actor and song-and-dance man, and co-created and co-starred in Song of Singapore, the environmental musical that earned him a Drama Desk Award. His résumé also includes acting stints with Spike Lee and performances for and with Frank Zappa, James Chance, David Lee Roth and Kool & the Gang. Writing about Garin at the Roxy, Will Friedwald called him “perhaps the most compelling musical omnivore I’ve ever encountered,” noting a repertoire that runs from Lizzo, Busta Rhymes and Jay-Z to Stephen Sondheim and Noël Coward.