The Piano Works, 25th September

A friend of mine told me all about the lovely evening he’d had at this newly opened Piano Bar in Farringdon which I’d never heard of, and as soon as he’d mentioned it, for the next week or so I couldn’t move for seeing this place talked about.

So I got straight on it and booked an area for my Meetup. I knew there were two pianos and throughout the night the band was built up around them. They work strictly on a request basis so anything can be played, from Dean Martin to Weezer depending on what the crowd is asking for.

By the time we got there the band were in full activation and it was clear there were quite a few after-work parties there that were well oiled. My group settled down right next to the bandstand and had a jolly time. Given the fact that anyone could request, some of the music was a little too crowdpleasing and cheesy for me, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere and was tempted on more than one occasion to get up and dance. The two pianists take turn singing the songs, and at one point one of them swapped out with a girl pianist who had a better voice than both of them by miles.

The other downside to the music being purely on a request basis is that everyone wants to request songs, and they hint that for yours to stand a chance of being played you need to include a tip. But even so, there’s no way they are going to get to everyone’s and I’m sure they must gauge the audience in deciding which songs make the cut. Our waitress did say that if our songs weren’t played we would get our money back but we didn’t really expect them to follow through on this and when the place was shutting at the end of the night we were proved correct. Did we mind? Not really – we’d had such a good time we stayed right until the end and 2 quid wasn’t something we minded losing out on for the evening’s entertainment.

Entry is free before 9 pm, £5 before 10 pm and £10 after but if you make a group booking of 10 or more you can save the entrance fee. With Christmas coming up this is the ideal work night out.