Our series continues with a profile of pianist Bryan Seet.

On Thursday evenings, Bryan Seet sends a last email for his IT job with Kaiser Permanente, takes a nap, then calls ahead to order a steak dinner at the Alley. Smooth-skinned in his mid-40s and lithe as a ferret, wearing a royalblue dress shirt buttoned to the top of his long neck, Seet eats his prime rib at the Alley’s bar, washes it down with a Red Bull, then joins the ring of regulars waiting for him to claim the piano.

“Angelique, what’ll it be?” he says, pointing to the first person to his left, and the night is off. For the next five hours, Seet will accompany opera singers through bits of “Carmen,” guide newbie crooners through “The Nearness of You,” and lead group sing-alongs of “Sweet Caroline.” Karaoke this ain’t; the music only happens if Seet plays the chords. So he does. Till 2 a.m. Often, he forgets to take a break.

Seet isn’t just clocking a marathon shift; he’s carrying on the work of the legendary Rod Dibble, whose photos and news clippings still hang among the detritus of yellowing business cards lining the walls of this Oakland bar, which opened in 1933. From 1960 until his death in December, Dibble ruled the Alley, playing more than 4,000 songs by memory, instantly adjusted to any key. But Dibble’s more remarkable feat was creating a community of rare diversity and unconditional support, a dive-bar sanctum where a nonagenarian widower could croon “Stardust” one minute, and a shy Millennial could try “Fever” and get rewarded by the “virgin bell” the next.

In this post-Dibble era, regulars pile Seet with jazz charts, asking him to learn Dibble’s old songs. They lavish him with thanks — and need. “Sometimes, I do wonder,” Seet says of bearing responsibility for Dibble’s traditions, “what have I gotten myself into?”

“Piano bar” is not the musical calling Seet’s parents, a Singaporean high school teacher and an Irish-born nurse who raised him outside Toronto, would have imagined. Seet studied classical piano and completed the Royal Conservatory of Toronto exams through 10th grade. But having other ambitions, and not having any musician role models, “I didn’t see it as a career, so I didn’t apply myself in that way.” In high school, he shifted in

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Bryan Seet, at the Alley piano bar in Oakland, is trying to pick up where the dive bar’s late legendary pianist Rod Dibble left off.