Hey, Piano Bar Lady!

About The Show 

Hey, Piano Bar Lady! premiered at Don't Tell Mama, New York City, on November 18th 2010. It is a "musical autobiography", a genre Linn Lorkin has made her own. Her hilarious and uplifting stories are told in an exuberant raconteuse style and crystallise in equally exuberant songs with "real" melodies and memorable lyrics. An earlier version of the show, then called "The Happy Hour and a Half" premiered in Berlin in 2009. 

The Story 

A naive kiwi pianist/singer arrives in '80s NY with no money and nowhere to stay, sleeps on SoHo sofas and stumbles into a gig playing in a delapidated piano bar; over the course of eight years she works her way up to playing in a swanky bar on Park Avenue. Along the way she marries, gets her green card and a divorce, has a baby and a whole heap of experiences from the ridiculous to the sublime. 

History: 

The show was first performed in a house-concert on Kurfurstendamm in Berlin in July 2009, then, under the title "The Happy Hour and a Half" at house-concerts and cafes in Auckland, and seven "salon" performances in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. These private performances gave rise to many re-writes, a new title and the composition of additional original songs. "Hey, Piano Bar Lady!" received it's New York premiere at Don't Tell Mama, Theatre Row, on November 18th 2010. 

About Linn Lorkin 

The phenomenally talented Linn Lorkin has performed all over the world. She was featured with her own trio at the famed Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London and regularly tours in Europe and Australia as the lead singer in The Jews Brothers Band and French Toast. Her theatre credits include several years of experimental theatre and most recently the performance of shows about different slices of her life, musical autobiographies. She sings in several languages and has recorded twelve albums for her own label, Rouge Records, including five CDs of her originals and two of French chansons. Her "Family at the Beach" which features in "Hey, Piano Bar Lady!" was voted Best Kiwi Summer Song in a recent New Zealand Radio Listeners' Poll. 


MEDIA QUOTES

 " Lorkin has such sparkle!  She is charmingly eccentric and wonderfully talented and her show is a lively combination of beautiful singing, spirited story-telling and dazzling jazz piano-playing "
Magee Hickey, WCBS-TV

" ...a delightful romp through '80s Manhattan.  Linn Lorkin is the complete entertainment package. "
Linda Amiel Burns,  BroadwayAfterDark.com

".she writes cool, elegant songs with brilliantly tangled rhymes and dizzying musical twists...Lorkin is a national treasure "  William Dart, NZ Listener 

Links: 
Promo Video (from" Don't Tell Mama" NYC, 18/11/2010
Down Coat ( complete song,from DTM, NYC)
Family at the Beach ( complete song from DTM, NYC))