STEPHEN HOLDEN ESSAY

NEW YORK - For the last 14 years, some of the most welcoming sounds in Midtown Manhattan have been the voice and piano of Daryl Sherman, heard as you enter the Waldorf-Astoria hotel at Park Avenue and 49th Street. As you ascended the green carpeted stairs to the lobby, her music invited you into a world of elegance where the spirit of Cole Porter, a longtime resident of the Waldorf, still hovered.
As of May 4, those sounds have been stilled. A few weeks ago, Ms. Sherman received word that for economic reasons her tenure at the cocktail terrace between the Empire and Hilton Rooms would end. Last year, the Hilton hotel chain, which owns the Waldorf-Astoria, was sold to the Blackstone Group of investors. Such sales almost always entail streamlining the operations and cutting back expenses.
Ms. Sherman is one the very last and finest of a vanishing breed of singerpianists who used to hold forth in the lobbies of luxury hotels in Manhattan.
Ms. Sherman, an effervescent 50- something woman, makes music suited to the foreground as well the background. The piano she has played is not any old keyboard but Cole Porter¡¯s piano, a brown, hand-painted midsize Steinway grand adorned with decorative scrolls and courtly, bewigged dancing figures.
Constructed in 1907, it was presented by the hotel in 1945 to Porter, who had already lived there for six years; it was moved to the lobby after his death in 1964. It is an impressive instrument, especially in the lower register, whose resonance Ms. Sherman sometimes demonstrated to patrons sipping tea .
If you spent enough hours on the terrace listening to her play, sing, and spin anecdotes from her storehouse of musical lore, sooner or later you might absorb most of the history of American popular song.
Introducing Porter¡¯s perennially requested ¡°Night and Day¡± early one Friday evening, she remarked, ¡°This is not me playing - this is Cole Porter¡¯s spirit playing by Ouija board.
¡± After finishing the instrumental introduction, she sang the rest of the song, then smiled and said, ¡°That was me, just so you¡¯ll know.¡±
Songs from the Porter musicals ¡°The New Yorkers¡± and ¡°Jubilee¡± followed, as well as her own song, ¡°Welcome to Manhattan,¡± which she described as ¡°a contemporary song that sounds like a ¡®30s song,¡± and it does. ¡°The ¡®30s are my decade - Depression,¡¯¡¯ she joked.
Ms. Sherman has many distinguished jazz mentors, most notably the trumpet player Dick Sudhalter, who introduced her to the classics of the Bing Crosby-Paul Whiteman era.
Some of the best advice about singing she ever received, she recalled, was from the great jazz interpreter Sylvia Syms, who died in 1992: ¡°Stop listening to the sound of your own voice and find the crux of the song and work back from that.¡±
Ms. Sherman has an optimistic attitude . ¡°I¡¯ve been very lucky,¡± she emphasized, ¡°and I¡¯m grateful for the last 14 years.¡¯¡¯ Then she giggled. ¡°Now all I have to do is find a rich man to buy the hotel and pay for a facelift when I really need it.¡±

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