100-Year-Old Pianist Celebrates His Birthday at Nino’s Tuscany – Midtown – DNAinfo.com New York

CENTRAL PARK SOUTH — If you ask 100-year-old Irving Fields what the secret to long life is, he’ll tell you it’s doing what you love.

That’s precisely what the pianist, singer and songwriter said is the reason he can celebrate his centennial this week.

The Central Park South resident has been playing jazz standards, classical pieces, Latin tunes and his own hits at hotels and restaurants since the 1940s.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and a slew of media outlets, surprised him on Friday at his favorite Italian restaurant, Nino’s Tuscany on East 58th Street where he also works, to wish him a “happy birthday.”

“Am I in heaven?” he asked, sitting at the Yamaha piano he plays six nights a week. “I want another 100 years. This is one of the happiest engagements of all the wonderful engagements I’ve done from the Taj Mahal in Bombay, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the Plaza Hotel, to every place I’ve played. Thank you.”