Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. A drinking establishment featuring, as an enticement to customers, a musician playing a piano or similar keyboard-based instrument.
Wikipedia
A piano bar (also known as a piano lounge) consists of a piano or electronic keyboard played by a professional musician, located in a cocktail lounge, bar, hotel lobby, office building lobby, restaurant, or on a cruise ship. Usually the pianist receives a small salary plus tips in a jar or basket on or near the piano, especially from patrons requesting a song traditionally written on a beverage napkin. Some piano bars feature a baby grand or grand piano surrounded by stools for patrons (or, somewhat humorously, an upright piano covered by a counter that makes it appear to be a grand piano). Others have a bar surrounding the piano or keyboard.
Jimmy Durante started as a piano bar player, as did Billy Joel. Joel's classic hit " Piano Man" is based on his experiences as a piano bar player. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli also played in piano bars to pay for singing lessons.
Theatre historian John Kenrick describes the piano bar as follows:
A piano bar is a hybrid creature: part performance space, part living room, part cruise-a-thon, and part saloon. The bar is there to sell drinks, the pianist is there to perform, and the crowd is there to sing, listen, drink and socialize. All of this means that it's impossible to predict what a given evening's chemistry will be, even if most of the people on hand are regular customers.... While every factor counts, the most important issue is the person at the piano. The pianist determines the type of music, the style of performance, and the general tone of the evening.... The experienced piano bar player knows how to take genial control of most any situation and generally keep the party going.
The Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs presents annually several awards, MAC Awards, for piano bar performers: Piano Bar Instrumentalist, Restaurant/Hotel Lounge Instrumentalist, Piano Bar/Restaurant Singing Entertainer – male and female.
Piano Bar is the name of the sixth studio album recorded by the French artist Patricia Kaas. It was released in 2002. Although it was less successful in France, a country in which Kaas' albums are generally well-received, it had higher sales and chartings in other countries such as Germany, Russia, USA, UK and Finland.
Piano Bar is the title of a book by Iranian writer Farhad Jafari The book was first published in 2007 by publishing spring. This is the first book written by Farhad Jafari in iran. the book has been published for 33 times. In the tenth presidential election of Ahmadinejad backed Unlike many writers.
Usage examples of "piano bar".
Near the entrance to the piano bar, about a dozen feet from the piano itself, are two chairs separated by an ashtray stand.
It was set up like a piano bar, a baby grand dominating the floor across from a built-in counter, complete with stools bolted along its length.
I'd been to a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, a piano bar in the Village, a pair of bars in the West Forties.
He turned his old living room into a small piano bar, and got a pianist from Miami, a thin, sad-faced man called Nelson Otto.
He looked at her for a long, long time while the sounds of the piano bar singer swirled around them, crying for an unfaithful love.
Up here above the weather, it's just me in a Boeing 747-400 time capsule with two hundred leftover chocolate cake desserts and an upstairs piano bar which I can just walk up to on the spiral staircase and mix myself another little drink.