Roxy Bar Presents: Pianist Michael Garin

Michael Garin brings his resident piano set to Roxy Bar, drawing from a deliberately wide songbook that the venue says moves between Shaggy, Om Kalthum, Rossini, Jobim, Zappa, and Raymond Scott. It is a piano performance built less around a fixed repertoire than a flowing sequence of references and requests, with Garin blurring the line between pianist and DJ. The evening also comes with the bar’s happy-hour drinks and oysters.

A longtime figure in New York nightlife, Garin is a Drama Desk Award winner whose résumé includes Elaine’s, the Monkey Bar, the Rainbow Room, and the VIP Room at Limelight. He co-created and co-starred in Song of Singapore, described by the venue as a groundbreaking environmental musical, and hosted midnight burlesque shows in the mid-1990s that helped launch the burlesque revival. His work has also included acting stints with Spike Lee. Garin works across piano, songwriting, singing, poetry, acting, and song-and-dance, and has developed a following for his daily promotional poems in an Ogden Nash style. At the Roxy, he is known for a smart, playful stream of musical consciousness and for inviting requests, sometimes announcing that he is “in his office” to take them.