Steve Lowenthal, This Friday and Every Friday!!!!

Does Madame enjoy a bit of "open mike" with her dessert and coffee?
Does Monsieur wish to serenade her?
Steve's got your key ... playing and singing the Standards and Broadway - every Friday 8PM - 11pm, at cozy La Mediterranee !

Singer-pianist Steven Lowenthal has been a highly-visible presence on the piano bar scene for over three-and-a-half decades, and yet has always been something of an enigma. Known not only for playing every song by ear but having a dazzlingly-vast repertoire of nearly any and every musical style and thousands of songs therein, Lowenthal as a musician has always displayed utter confidence and showmanship. But Lowenthal as a person has never, until now, been particularly forthcoming about his past, or what led him to the piano bars of New York.

Born and raised in the Long Island town of Commack (which also includes Rosie O’Donnell among its native entertainers), Lowenthal’s childhood was nothing if not eclectic, and he felt misunderstood at times. “I'd say I was the kind of a kid who thinks he's funny even when he's hurting somebody, and got straight A's to boot. Then you get to the wider world of grades seven through twelve, where corrections must happen, and you are now officially misunderstood. A kid could get spooked. If misunderstood means lonely, then I was. As in Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bookends.' The usual, in other words. But other kids were more impressed that I played show tunes and a few pop hits on the piano. It makes it a bit harder to dismiss someone, because piano's always a cool instrument.” And even though he was honing his varied musical tastes from an early age, becoming a professional musician was the furthest thing from his mind. “I had no idea of becoming a musician. I thought I was clever, maybe, but only for the living room, like President Nixon's playing. I'd had two years of home lessons and rudimentary skills, but virtually no reading of music; we've never gotten to the bottom of that. I never liked to study, I was bad at following directions, and not sure which came first. Anyway," he continues, “my teacher, Mr Furrer, was giving the standard classical lessons even though he was a terrific stride player. And at nine or ten, I had no patience for learning my lessons, and just wanted to play. One day, Mr Furrer walks up to the screen door while I'm sounding out 'The Siamese Cat Song,' and also he sees that I've been playing my pieces from memory. He tells my folks that I'm not reading music and he's sorry, and that was the end of that. But I sure am glad we kept the piano, and must thank my mother for not telling me to stop all that banging; my grandmother would put her hands over her ears. Still, when you do it long enough and you’re just enjoying it, you learn to put a few things together. As for my musical tastes, dad kept the radio tuned to WNEW-AM 1130, New York's pride, where Willam B. Williams and Ted Brown spun the standards. And 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' where you got a dose of Little Stevie Wonder while you waited for Eydie Gorme. Well, I did, anyway. Also, my aunts gave me all the hit show albums every birthday or Chanukah from 1964 on: Dolly, Fiddler, Funny Girl, Mame, Cabaret, Bajour and all that Rodgers & Hammerstein. That accounts for my time at Marie's Crisis; it's all their fault,” he chuckles. "And of course, as much as I resisted anything written for teenagers, pop music gets into your head anyway. That was my 1960s; I was twelve when the Beatles got here, and when Louis Armstrong topped them on the charts with 'Hello Dolly.' You picked up every kind of music on the TV variety shows; it gave us all a very wide frame of reference, in contrast to that specialized, 'niche' mentality that exists now. It's a shame the way pop radio fragmented from all-inclusiveness to such narrow playlists, and finally to everyone's personal escape with earbuds; not conducive to ‘Dancin' in the Streets.’ I'm lucky to have been around back then; if I'd known what a great musical age I was living through, I'd have paid more attention,” he concludes.

Written by Andrew Martin