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NO ONE at the rectangular bar, or at the tables scattered around the room, is listening to Shelly Peiken. They're drinking and talking and watching people pass on Seventh Avenue.
Which is too bad for them, because the singer / pianist at Notes, in the Omni Park Central Hotel, has a breezy way with familiar pop songs. And from time to time, she slips in her own uptempo compositions - songs that have been recorded by Southside Johnny, Taylor Dayne and Samantha Fox.
Across town, soggy souls limp into the handsome piano bar of Jake's restaurant, Second Avenue at 43rd Street, escaping the heat. They have cold drinks and chatter on their minds. But Tom Lellis, seated at his electric piano, also provides refreshment.
He takes them "Up on the Roof," where the air "is fresh and clean." The gab continues. So does Lellis, with a novel arrangement of the Beatles' "Norweigian Wood."
So it goes with New York's piano bars - those sit-and sip venues typically found next to a restaurant's dining room or a few steps off a hotel lobby. Although pegged by Bill Murray and other comics as a nighttime species ripe for ridicule, and evoked sadly in song by others ("Piano Man"), in reality, many of Manhattan's piano bars and classier "piano rooms" offer players whose dimension and flair surmount the din. WHAT'S MORE, with Broadway shows, new films and restaurant dinners drawing ever-higher tariffs, the piano settings promise diversion and respite for only about $3 and up per drink. A sampling of the current fare turns up players and venues for a spectrum of tastes.
The long-running upstairs cabaret at The Duplex, 55 Grove St. off Sheridan Square, has served as the launch pad for Hal Holbrook's "Mark Twain Tonight!" and the stand-up careers of Woody Allen, Dick Cavett and other performers. But in the downstairs piano bar, it's the patrons who star.
Only one table was occupied on a recent evening but the three seated there were filling the room with big-hearted singing. Timothy Moore played the upright, as he does four nights a week, as the trio belted out "Crazy" and "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." Soon, other couples drifted in from the street;...