Music for Corporate Entertainment

For many years I have supplied music for and played in bands that provide music for corporate entertainment. Customers have included Audi, The Evening Standard, Sainsbury’s, P.C. World, Safeway’s, large corporate clients at Henley and Ascot, I.T.V. and H.M. Treasury. Because of this experience I felt it would be relevant in putting down some pointers in helping clients choose the right kind of music for their particular corporate entertainment.

Entertainingly enough, most corporate hospitality entertainment work tends to require music as an ingredient to a larger recipe. What I mean by this is a great deal of corporate events is offering a multi service package. Typically an organization may be putting on an evening’s entertainment to thank its workforce for a particularly successful year. They may be offering music, food, and comedy, a close up magician, a casino and a caricaturist. The corporate client organizing needs to decide what part the music has to play in the days/evenings entertainment.

In a situation such as this you will naturally need music from the outset as part of the meet and greet of the corporate evening. A four-piece swing or Latin group is ideal with a larger ensemble for particularly large gatherings. A professional outfit can pitch the music at just the right decibel level so your guests can talk and enjoy the entertainment without it encroaching on conversation. The musicians would naturally be dressed in Lounge Suits or Tuxedos to mirror what the guests are wearing themselves. The music portrays an atmosphere of sophistication, which again hopefully reflects the evenings overall ambience.

It is rare for mutual clients to want to dance especially as clients there relationship is business not pleasure! In most cases it is more main that the band is flexible in when it is needed over the course of the evening i.e. at the top of the night for the reception, a smaller version of the band, stopping for speeches and then after the speeches to play until other entertainment is put on for the corporate clients. In this situation give the band a clear idea of how you expect the evening to go. What to wear, when they will be needed, when they need to get their instruments in the building and be set up, when breaks will be required, let them know if it is convenient or not to feed them and then finally how they can leave when finished so as not to disrupt the rest of the entertainment.