Roxy Bar Presents: Pianist Michael Garin

Michael Garin plays a solo piano set at Roxy Bar, where he is the resident pianist. The evening centers on his freewheeling approach to the instrument, with a repertoire that the venue says moves among Shaggy, Om Kalthum, Rossini, Jobim, Zappa, and Raymond Scott. Requests are part of the format, and Garin may invite children to play alongside him or fold in comic touches such as tap dancing from the piano bench. It is a post-work performance built around the changing flow of his selections rather than a fixed recital program.

A Drama Desk Award winner, Garin has been a fixture of New York nightlife for decades. His résumé includes engagements at Elaine’s, the Monkey Bar, the Rainbow Room, and the VIP Room at Limelight. Beyond the piano, he has worked as a songwriter, singer, poet, actor, and song-and-dance performer; he co-created and co-starred in Song of Singapore, the environmental musical recognized with his Drama Desk Award, hosted midnight burlesque shows in the mid-1990s, and has had acting stints with Spike Lee. The venue describes his Roxy work as a “beguiling musical experience,” blurring pianist and DJ, with a “goofy, stylish, and very smart stream of musical consciousness.”