Roxy Bar Presents: Pianist Michael Garin

Michael Garin brings his resident-pianist set to Roxy Bar, where the evening’s music moves freely through a personal repertoire rather than a conventional piano-bar program. The Roxy describes Garin as blurring the line between pianist and DJ, threading together references as far apart as Shaggy, Om Kalthoum, Rossini, Jobim, Frank Zappa, and Raymond Scott. Expect a continuously shifting stream of songs, quotations, and requests, with Garin’s own comic asides part of the performance. The listing also notes his habit of inviting children to play along and of tap dancing while seated at the piano bench.

A Drama Desk Award winner, Garin has been a New York nightlife mainstay for decades. His résumé includes engagements at Elaine’s, the Monkey Bar, the Rainbow Room, and Limelight’s VIP Room. 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 that earned him the Drama Desk Award, hosted midnight burlesque shows in the mid-1990s that helped launch the burlesque revival, and has acted with Spike Lee. He also releases daily promotional poems in an Ogden Nash style and has recorded the album Hey Look! It’s Michael and Mardie.