Frequently Asked Questions About Our Jazz Musicians

Yes, we’ll be happy to help you to find the right size group and instrumentation for your event, taking into account volume level desired, if an in-tune piano is available at the venue, the amount of space available, your personal preferences, and your budget. Having performed on thousands of occasions over the course of three decades at every kind of venue imaginable, we can guide your choices by giving you expert advice tailored to your particular needs and circumstances.

A booking agency or club date office typically contracts “designated” bandleaders who assemble pickup bands comprised of jazz musicians for hire who may have never performed together before. The bandleader himself and his musicians may or may not be active members of the New York jazz scene. We offer something much better: several working New York jazz groups, all led by a single bandleader with extensive experience both within the New York jazz scene, and with leading groups for private and public events and weddings. There are no salespeople. Our clients deal directly with the the bandleader himself. (Parenthetically, a booking agency or club date office performs a different function than an event planner or wedding planner. The latter are more generalized and offer wider services. They coordinate all the details of an event, including its music, and often work together with bandleaders.) 

You needn’t worry. More often than not, my jazz musicians are hired to provide background music, and we are expert at fulfilling that function. Because I am a bandleader in addition to being a drummer, I'm extremely conscientious when it comes to keeping the volume level of my playing at an appropriate level; in fact, I'm even able to play more softy than an acoustic piano. And as a bandleader, I'm used to directing my musicians to keep their total sound levels below the level of the surrounding conversation. In addition, I'm very easy to work with; if for any reason you think we may be too loud, just let me know and we will adjust accordingly.

Most any you could ask for! All of our groups use upright acoustic bass and drums; our trios feature piano, guitar, or vibraphone as the lead instrument, while our quartets feature saxophone-guitar or vibraphone-guitar as the lead instruments, and our quintet features piano, saxophone and trumpet and the lead instruments. We are also able to add vocalists to any of our groups. And, we can also assemble custom groups to match any instrumentation you have in mind that your don’t see on our site.

Yes, our jazz musicians are able to play literally any standard from the Great American Songbook or any Brazilian bossa nova song that you can think of, often on the spot when one of your guests request a favorite during your event. In addition, if you have any favorite jazz compositions, our musicians can almost certainly accommodate those as well.

The number one pitfall to watch out for is false advertising, which is widespread in our industry. Typically, it takes the form of a bandleader or booking agent misrepresenting themselves by posting audio recordings on their websites or web ads that feature different musicians than they actually offer. Many bandleaders, for example, post music borrowed from the studio-recorded CDs made by some of their sidemen, which feature an all-star personal and a lavish level of production that is not representative of their working bands. One very popular bandleader even approached me once about using one of my videos to represent his groups on his website in exchange for sharing his marketing advice (and became quite nasty when I declined).

The only way to know for sure whether a recording represents the actual group you are considering hiring is by insisting on seeing a video of the group itself, or else knowing the bandleader well enough to be able to trust his integrity.

Similarly, another common mistake many people make when choosing a band is to base their choice primarily on the persuasiveness of the bandleader or booking agent, rather than on the quality of their musical samples. Many bandleaders are highly skilled salesmen, and are expert at answering objections and closing deals, but in the end, it is the quality of the music itself that will matter for your event, and the only way to judge the quality of the music is through listening to—and seeing—the actual group the bandleader is selling.

No, I am a drummer-bandleader who leads several different groups in several different instrumentations and styles, and who works with both professional event planners and individuals. If you are an event planner, I offer the advantage of one-stop shopping whenever you need a world-class New York City jazz band. If you are an individual, I offer the advantage of saving you the cost of dealing with middlemen, avoiding having to interact with sales people and marketers, and having the ability to plan your event by working directly with the bandleader himself. (If you are a jazz musician looking for work, I'm unfortunately unable to help you, as the musicians I use in my groups have been very carefully chosen, and our musical relationships well established, over the course of the past twenty years.)

Yes, we can perform both traditional ceremony music, such as Canon in D, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire, Here Comes The Bride (Wagner's "Bridal Chorus") and The Wedding March (from A Midsummer Night's Dream), as well as non-traditional ceremony music of your choosing.

We are able to play all the compositions from the Great American Songbook at any tempo and energy level. If you can imagine your guests dancing to the music of Frank Sinatra, Diana Krall, or Count Basie, you can be assured that they will love dancing to our music as well.

Conversely, if you require loud, contemporary dance music such as hip hop, R&B, rock or Motown, the best alternative is to hire a DJ for the latter part of the evening in addition to one of our jazz groups for the early part of the evening. By combining jazz musicians for the cocktail and dinner hour, and a DJ for dancing, you get the best of both worlds: the elegance and sophistication that only live jazz musicians can provide, and the volume, energy, and contemporary musical styles that DJs specialize in providing for dancers. That said, about half of our wedding clients prefer to use jazz for dancing for the latter part of the evening as well. Jazz has a strong advantage over the entertainment provided by DJs, which is that, unlike loud dance music, jazz pleases everyone and offends no one, and live music projects a level of elegance, intimacy and excitement that recorded music can never duplicate.

There are several considerations that can influence your choice of a band. If your budget is limited, you may want to choose a trio rather than a quartet or quintet. If you want purely background music, and you have a small space, you may want to avoid bands with saxophone or trumpet, which tend to be louder than bands that don't feature those instruments, and you may also want to avoid vocalists, who tend to attract attention rather then blending in as part of the ambiance of the room. If the venue has an acoustic piano, you'll probably want to consider using a group with a pianist; if not, you might consider a group that features a guitarist or vibraphonist as the chording instrument. As a bandleader with over thirty years of experience, I will be happy to help you to choose the best possible musicians based on considerations such as these.

In the end, of course, it all comes down to personal preference, and since all of the musicians are excellent, you really can't go wrong. There are no bad choices, only great ones.

While it's common for clients to tip the band, it's not required and is entirely according to your discretion.

Our jazz musicians carry liability insurance for $2,000,000 which fulfills the needed insurance requirements for any venue, and offer certificates upon request.

We offer something much better than an audio recording: two full length videos of each of our bands, so that you can see and hear the group and learn everything there is to know about our musicians and their music.

The quality that distinguishes us from other music services is the fact that all of our groups are real working New York jazz groups, and that you can see and hear the actual musicians we offer for hire in our videos. With that said, I've been a bandleader in New York for over twenty years and so can assemble almost any group in any instrumentation you can imagine, including many that are not on featured on our site, and it is also quite possible to combine musicians from the various groups you see in the videos into other, different instrumental combinations. If you want a particular instrumentation that you don't see on the site just ask. As you can see from our videos, I never assemble bands that are less than great.

There are a number of additional great New York City singers that I work with who are not in my videos, and who are capable of subbing for my regular vocalists, either when they are not available, or when a client is looking for a vocalist of a particular style that is not represented by my regular vocalists. For these singers, photos, audio files, and song lists are available upon request.

We do not require it, but it is a very nice gesture. Often the musicians travel for an hour, setup for an hour, play for four hours, tear down for an hour, and travel another hour home. That's an eight hour day.

I've been a jazz bandleader for over 30 years, including over 20 years in New York City. Each of my bands is a regular working group that has been together with the same personnel from 3 to 10 years on average.

As I'm sure you can tell, there is really no one quite like Nicki, but when she's not available, it is very possible to add one of the other world class singers that I work with, like Hilary from my vocal-sax quintet, to any of my instrumental groups. In addition, I also work with a very talented pianist-vocalist named Heather who often works in my vocal-piano trio when Nicki’s not available. And while Nicki is admittedly very special, one fact remains: there's only one of her, and if she's not available for your particular date, you'll still never be able to find better jazz musicians for hire elsewhere than you can find among my other vocalists and bands. They are all the best of the best, and the best in New York City.

We don't do music outside our genre, such as rock, Motown, hip hop, etc. Music within our genre includes jazz compositions, Great American Songbook standards (i.e., the kinds of tunes Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett might sing), and Brazilian bossa nova music.

I actually have something better: code snippets that will allow you to embed our videos on your own website, or in email communication with your clients. In this way, you can not only show videos of our jazz musicians for hire to your client, but you can brand it with your own company.

Alternately, if you let us know who your client is and what date is under consideration, you can feel free to safely share our site with your client without fear of our ever working with your client directly. One reason why we would never do that is that we pride ourselves on our integrity and reputation; another is that it's in our self-interest to establish a trusted, long-term professional relationship with you. We don't just want to work with you just once; we want to work with you as often as possible, for many, many years!

While there is no one style of music that pleases everyone equally, jazz is the only American popular music that has a general appeal to all demographic and age groups. Virtually every other style of music will offend some segment of your guests: conservative guests dislike hip hop; older guests dislike rock; urban guests dislike country, etc. But virtually all of your guests will enjoy jazz. As a demonstration of this, notice that at a typical jazz concert you’ll find a variety of demographic groups, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, all enjoying the music, socializing and bonding together. There’s nothing like live jazz music in that regard. In addition, jazz is the only American popular music that can function equally well as both background music and listening music. Jazz’s elegance, flexibility and wide appeal is unique, and your guests will love it! 

Yes and no. As a bandleader, my groups typically perform at a variety of public and private events each week; of the public events, on any given week, only one or two of the several groups presented on my website are represented, so that you are unlikely to be able to hear the particular musicians you are interested in. In addition, because my groups are real New York jazz bands, rather than club date, wedding or pickup bands comprised of musicians for hire, the repertoire and style of jazz that we typically perform at restaurants, concerts and nightclubs tends to be less conservative than the style of jazz we perform for private events, and so not necessarily representative of the music we would play at your event. With that understood, I’m always happy to meet potential clients at our public performances, where they have an opportunity to see the general level of excellence of my groups, and I have an opportunity to meet them, so please feel free to come by any of my gigs and say hello!

Happily, there is one place that you can hear all of our bands live, and in the exact style that we would perform for your event, and that’s the many videos featured on our website, all of which were recorded live at the Sweet Rhythm jazz club here in the West Village in New York City.

Because of the variety of different groups we offer, and because we are unique among New York bandleaders and agencies in providing videos of our actual working groups as opposed to generic jazz musicians for hire, you can think of New York Jazz Events as “one stop shopping” whenever you need a jazz group for an event. Because of our consistent level of quality and integrity, we provide a much better alternative than “shopping around” on the internet, only to turn up a hodgepodge of video and audio files of jazz musicians of uneven quality and reliability. You can do your job as an assistant more effectively and make your boss's decision much easier by simply directing him to our site. Once there, he or she is sure to notice that all of the bands are of exceptional quality, and with our professionally-produced videos and wide variety of bands, choosing one becomes a simple matter of your boss's personal preference.

We require half of the payment in advance, which enables us to reserve date and turn down competing offers, with the balance due on or before the date of the event.