Garin & Millet at M Salon

Hotels and piano bars go together like cocktail shakers and martinis. So why, in the city of Broadway and countless preternaturally talented musicians, has the hotel piano bar become a borderline endangered species?

Count Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle and the Rum House at the Edison among the plucky stalwarts that have staved off the twin threats of recession and changing music tastes and kept their lounge pianos playing. (more…)

Hudson lobby.

It’s not exactly the comfort of strangers.

Green Eyes, a rarely seen one-act play by Tennessee Williams, dramatizes the nightmarish encounter of the Dunphys, a couple honeymooning in a New Orleans hotel room. Written in 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War – and unpublished until 2008 – the couple’s brutal assignation (he is an impotent vet traumatized by war, she is a ravenous, Williams harridan) translates the horrors of war into a violently deranged lovers quarrel. (more…)

Not so long ago, New York hotel bars were almost like supper clubs without the supper, a classic mix of martinis and live music, part Bobby Short, part Fabulous Baker Boys. For the price of a drink or two or three, a pianist, harpist or jazz trio would entertain you before you headed upstairs or back home.

Times change, fashions change, recessions happen. Cocktail entertainment still thrives at hotels if you look hard enough. Consider Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, where the Loston Harris Trio and pianist Chris Gillespie tease standards most evenings. (more…)