Feature: Don't Tell Mama Proves You Can't Keep A Good Piano Bar Down

The springtime air of Hell's Kitchen was palpable with life. No part of 46th Street was quiet, though the electric energy was peaceful as relieved friends gathered in outdoor dining areas, happily reunited with one another and the art of social intercourse after what seemed like an interminable hibernation. Every dining establishment that survived the health and economic crises of the last fourteen months bustled with business as servers ran plates of steaming food from indoors to out. Drag queens posed for pictures and a swing band flooded the night sky with music that harmonized with the sounds of laughter and chatter. New York City, Midtown Manhattan, and Restaurant Row were once more alive as I and my husband headed home.

Home, in this case, is not where we cook our meals, sleep, meditate and reside. Home is a little nightclub in our neighborhood that we have frequented many times over the years; it is the club where we saw our first cabaret shows in New York and it is the piano bar where we used to sit on the stools and yammer with Kenny Burrows as he slung drinks behind the bar. It is the club that many call home, not just us, and it, like the rest of Manhattan, is awake and alive, and filled with happy energy, and on this night, it was where Pat and I decided to set a spell and enjoy the ambiance of one of the great piano bars of New York City, the piano bar at Don't Tell Mama.

Over the years, the configuration of Don't Tell Mama has changed and changed again. There once was a cabaret room, there once was two. There was a room with a pool table, there was a cabaret stage up front, there was a restaurant up front. The game of musical chairs in the cabaret rooms at Don't Tell Mama has provided many artists with different stages upon which to sing, and many audiences with memories joyful, sad, sadly forgettable, wildly memorable, but always authentic examples of the cabaret nightlife of NYC. In the front, though, the Don't Tell Mama piano bar experience has never, ever changed. As regular patrons stop at their favorite watering hole to share a laugh with other regulars and listen to excellent music that just happens to be free of charge, bartenders and servers take turns joking with the tourists who flock to the joint, before running up to the microphone to entertain them with a song. This is the look of the piano bar. The music has changed somewhat over the years...

In the Nineties, when I first stepped inside Mama's, the servers belted out Broadway, usually tunes from Les Mis and Dreamgirls, songs by Sondheim and hits by Herman - sometimes performers perfected offerings from movie musicals. Today the selection of songs may tend toward pop and rock music, The Top Forty and The Hot 100, though there is always a place in a piano bar for a good power ballad, or rousing rendition of Rent's big hits. Last weekend, as my beloved and I sat at (what is essentially) ringside, we were treated to some fierce piano treatments of songs made famous by Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston, as pianist Nate Buccieri brought his A-Game to the stage - a stage conveniently partitioned off by mid-air suspended sheets of plastic that, in no way, inhibited the action or the enjoyment of the evening's proceedings. Buccieri, a charmer if ever there were one, seems able to play anything you ask him to ... and if he can't, he hides it well while reading the music he calls up on his tablet. Only from where I sat could I see that he needed a visible assist while playing "Ain't Nobody" as though he performed the song every day of the week. Server Tara Martinez and Bartenders Laura Pavles and Jon Satrom clearly DO sing the song every day because their backup vocals from the bar all occurred with a mic in one hand while pouring and serving with the other. Truly, it was like watching a corps de ballet or the Cirque de So Gay - it's piano bar heaven. Meanwhile, socially distanced guests, maskless in their individual pods, showed signs of no pandemic stress - only happiness in the act of enjoying a night out once more. The sight of these strangers relaxing into the family atmosphere provided by everything that Don't Tell Mama has to offer was enough to melt away my own stress from the week -which was considerable.

Indeed, by the time our family was headed for the door, always affable host Michael Kirk Lane insisted we stay for one more number, for the ladies had a duet following Mr. Satrom's solo - and that duet was that song everyone can always listen to, "For Good" - and it was good, especially when Ms. Martinez left Ms. Pavles at her mic to go serve a drink in the middle of the performance. That's the kind of thing you only see in the neighborhood atmosphere provided by a place like the Don't Tell Mama piano bar, a place where you can sit back, relax, have a drink or seven, chat with friends that are at your table or serving your table, and enjoy the summer nights of Manhattan... and the autumn, winter, and spring nights that will come, now that life has become, once more, the order of the day.

Don't Tell Mama is located at 343 West 46th Street
For information on The Piano Bar click HERE

This schedule of performers provided by Don't Tell Mama builds the framework of entertainment, but is subject to change:

Monday
Anna Anderson
Joseph Redd
Michael Issacs on piano

Tuesday
Elaine Brier
Brian Kalinowski
Joe Regan on Piano

Wednesday
Joseph Redd
Alison Nusbaum
Paddy on the Piano

Thursday
Elaine Brier
Laura Pavles
Jon Satrom
Nate Buccieri on piano

Friday
Elaine Brier
Tara Martinez
Joseph Redd
Gerry Dieffenbach on piano

Saturday
Tara Martinez
Laura Pavles
Jon Satrom
William TN Hall on piano

Sunday
Tara Martinez
Paul Pilcz
Nate Buccieri on piano