What piano music books to use for playing in a restaurant/cafe?
Pretty much all the Piano Bar and Restaurant players I know (and I know quite a few) use the Real Books for Jazz. I can’t think of a player from name musicians to the unknowns who don’t own a copy. There’s even a massive DVD copy of it floating around that some studious person made by scanning every single page of every jazz Real book (it’s an illegal copy but man, is it helpful). I have a copy of the DVD but it can’t be emailed…it’s really a huge file. For other styles there plenty of fake and real books in every style and it’s a good idea to have a few different styles on hand because you never know when you’re going to get an odd request. These books are the best way to be prepared. The players I know carry around at least three books and/or 3 ring binders that they’ve made up themselves of copied pages from these books. They often play two gigs in a night and go from a jazz setting to a singalong type setting where standards and pop tunes are more appropriate.