Live jazz for restaurants and hotels

Restaurants and hotels are a different discipline from a corporate party. Guests did not come for a concert — they came for dinner. The music has to create an atmosphere people can sit and talk in, without disappearing entirely. That balance lives in decibels and in repertoire.

We play regularly at Hotel Augustine, Le Palais Art Hotel and Fairmont Golden Prague, as well as at Jazz Club Reduta. Here is how such a collaboration works in practice.

Which line-up suits a hospitality space

In a restaurant, floor area and volume decide — not band size. That is why the answer is almost always a duo or a trio.

Drums do not belong in an ordinary restaurant — acoustically they overpower the room even when played softly. If the owner wants a full sound without volume, the answer is a double bass, not drums.

Set lengths and timing

Hospitality venues are not played as one continuous block. The format that works is two to three 45-minute sets with 15 to 20 minute breaks. The break is functional — it gives guests room to talk and staff room to serve.

• Dinner service: start around 19:00, when the first wave of guests is seated.
• Hotel lobby and bar: a later start, around 19:30 to 20:00.
• Sunday brunch: two shorter blocks during the morning, quieter and purely for listening.

Volume, specifically

The rule I work to: at a table three metres from the band, it must be possible to hold a normal conversation without raising your voice. When guests start leaning towards each other, the music is too loud — whatever the meter says.

In practice that means heavily reduced monitoring, piano without harsh top end and vocals only lightly supported by the PA. We bring our own active Bose system, which covers a room of up to 80 to 100 guests. Larger rooms need a sound engineer on the venue's side.

How a regular residency is arranged

A residency differs from a one-off event in three ways: frequency, repertoire and price.

• Frequency. The most common patterns are one fixed evening a week, or one to two evenings a month. A fixed day has an advantage — guests remember it and start coming for it.
• Repertoire. A residency cannot repeat itself. We have more than 100 songs, which lasts a season without a regular guest noticing a loop.
• Price. Residency rates are set differently from one-off events — by frequency, set length and line-up. A single evening in a restaurant follows the standard price list, from CZK 10,000 for a duo.

What we need from the venue

• Floor area according to line-up, on a level and dry surface.
• One standard socket, 230 V / 16 A. Total power draw does not exceed 1.5 kW.
• The ability to arrive 60 minutes before the start. Set-up and pack-down each take 30 minutes.
• Somewhere outside the room to leave instrument cases.

The full technical rider is in the article what the band needs on site.

What we play

Jazz and swing standards, bossa nova, chanson and modern songs in tasteful jazz arrangements. From the repertoire: Fly Me to the Moon, Summertime, The Girl from Ipanema, Lullaby of Birdland and Cheek to Cheek. The difference between listening music and dance music is covered in background jazz vs dance music.

About the author

David Kleňha is a jazz singer and bandleader based in Prague, performing across the Czech Republic. He leads line-ups from duo to quintet — jazzduo.cz, jazztrio.cz, jazzquartet.cz and jazzquintet.cz — and has played more than 320 events since 2015: corporate evenings, receptions, gallery openings, hotel and restaurant nights, weddings and festivals. More on his personal site davidklenha.cz.

Frequently asked questions