Crescendos Piano Bar

Traveling a lot (9+ months a year!), it's fair to say that there is a piano bar culture elsewhere that most Americans are completely unfamiliar with. The American piano bar is a swanky but sleepy hotel lounge, or a sing-along gay bar with older men cackling "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria" while downing 800 calorie fruity drinks. But in the Netherlands, the Caribbean, and Scandinavia, a different type of piano bar with high energy performers using a digital piano in the shell of a real piano (most guests don't know it isn't a real piano) with a keyboard bass and a drum machine are at the ready to do everything from the expected jazzy standards, to dance music, R&B, and songs from today's Top 40. The best of them are as ready to perform Les Miz as they are to perform Oasis, Jason Mraz, and Coldplay. Introducing this style of piano bar to the USA is a company that has brought this brand of musical fun to Aruba, Curacao and St. Maarten at their Sopranos Piano bars. Expect a great, friendly, welcoming barstaff, great cocktails that you pay a lot more for a clubs with velvet ropes and 2 hour waits outside, and an atmosphere where international travelers at the nearby Loew's and Ritz Carlton hotels mix freely and joyously with gays and lesbians, locals and club hipsters. Early in the night, outrageous happy hour specials (including $5 cocktails where the well drinks are familiar top house brands). Later on, it's no trouble to have your mojito properly muddled, not some nightclub squeeze bottle variation. The performers rotate every two weeks, so it always stays fresh. Crescendos, located underneath the Ritz Carlton (but not in the hotel) is on Lincoln Road near the beach, just beyond Collins Avenue.