Music for a Christmas gala or awards dinner
A seated dinner is a fixed running order with other people’s speeches in it, and music at one succeeds or fails on timing rather than on repertoire. The pieces are short, the moments are specific, and the whole thing has to survive a starter arriving late. This guide covers the three places music usually goes and how to brief the room.
Three places music goes at a dinner
The grace. A sung grace before the meal is the oldest of these and still the most effective. One voice, unaccompanied, thirty seconds, and the room goes from two hundred people talking to complete silence without anyone tapping a glass.
Between courses. Short set pieces while plates are cleared. Two or three minutes each, no more, and placed where the service has a natural pause rather than where your running order says it should be.
After the loyal toast or the awards. A longer set once the formal business is done and before the room breaks up. This is where a choir can actually perform, because for the first time in the evening nobody is eating.
Most dinners use one or two of these. Using all three is possible and needs the toastmaster on side from the start.
The sung grace
A single trained voice silences a room faster than a microphone does, which is the practical argument for a sung grace at a large dinner. It also solves the problem of a chairman having to shout for attention before their own event has started.
Latin graces are the tradition in livery halls, colleges and City dinners, and they have the advantage of brevity. An English grace suits a corporate audience better where nobody is expecting Latin, and a bespoke grace naming the company or the occasion is straightforward to arrange if you ask in advance.
A soloist is £250. This is the cheapest thing on the list and the one that most reliably gets remarked on.
Between courses
Keep them short. Two or three minutes is right; five is too long for a room that has just been served. The pieces should be self-contained, recognisable within a bar, and not require the audience to have heard the previous one.
Placement is the hard part, because kitchens run to their own timetable. The workable arrangement is that we agree the pieces in advance and the toastmaster or banqueting manager cues them on the night, rather than fixing them to clock times that will drift by twenty minutes before the main course.
The singers should be positioned away from the tables, ideally at one end of the room or on a gallery. Close to the tables, a choir makes the guests nearest to them stop eating, which is not a kindness.
Expect service to continue during the music at all but the most formal dinners. That is normal, and it is a reason to choose robust pieces over delicate ones.
Working around speeches and awards
An awards dinner has a lot of talking in it, and music is the thing that stops it becoming an unbroken hour of it. Placed between award categories, a two-minute piece resets the room’s attention, which is worth more at that point in the evening than anything on the menu.
What to avoid is music immediately after a long speech, when the room wants to talk. Better before the speeches than after them, or between two of them rather than at the end of the run.
If there is a charity appeal, put the music before it rather than after. A room that has just listened to something sung together gives more than a room that has just sat through the third speech.
We need the running order a week out, and we need to know who holds the cue on the night. A dinner where nobody has been told to signal the choir is a dinner where the choir sings at the wrong moment.
Ensemble size for a dinner
Dinner rooms are more forgiving than receptions, because the audience is seated and the room falls quiet on cue. Four voices cover a dinner of up to about 200; six for a large banqueting hall or a room of 300 and above.
For a grace alone, one voice is the right answer and a choir is not an improvement. A soloist singing a grace to five hundred people works, because the room is silent by design.
Livery halls are usually panelled, which absorbs more sound than stone but presents no real difficulty when the room is quiet. Hotel ballrooms have height and hard surfaces and carry sound well. Marquees are the hardest room of the three and want six voices.
A Small Choir of four is £1,150, a Sextet £1,600, and a soloist £250.
Repertoire for a seated room
Carols work better at a dinner than at a reception, because the room is quiet and facing one direction. Two or three well-known carols in the after-dinner set will get a seated room singing where the same carols at a drinks reception would not.
For between courses, close-harmony Christmas songs sit better than sacred repertoire: they are shorter, they carry over the sound of service, and they do not ask the room to change mood mid-meal.
The after-dinner set is where the choral repertoire earns its place. This is the point to programme the piece the choir does best, because it is the only part of the evening with the room’s full attention.
Finish on something everyone knows. A dinner that ends with the room singing breaks up in a better temper than one that ends with applause.
Practical requirements
Singers need somewhere to stand and somewhere to wait. A holding room matters more at a dinner than anywhere else, because the group may be on site for three hours and singing for twenty minutes of them.
Everything is sung unaccompanied, so there is no power requirement and nothing to plug in. Where a venue has a piano and you want background music between the sets, a pianist is £225 on top of the choir booking; if there is no piano we can bring a keyboard and speaker for an extra charge, quoted upfront.
Tell us whether the singers are eating. It is a small thing and it is the question banqueting managers most often forget to ask, and a group that has been on site since six without a meal does not sing better at ten.
Dress and register
Black tie dinners want concert dress. All black is the alternative where the choir should read as part of the evening rather than as a turn. Christmas jumpers do not belong at a gala dinner, and we will say so if you ask for them.
For a City or livery dinner, the register is formal throughout: a Latin grace, restrained repertoire, and singers who understand that they are part of the proceedings rather than the entertainment. Our page for livery companies covers that setting specifically.
Booking
The corporate dinner season runs from late November to the third week of December, and the Thursdays in that window go first. Most years our December dates are gone by the middle of September.
December is charged at the same rates as the rest of the year. A standard booking covers up to an hour and a half including breaks; a dinner where the choir is on call across a four-hour running order is a longer booking, and we quote that upfront rather than adding it afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sung grace and how long does it take?
A short grace sung before the meal, usually by one voice and unaccompanied, lasting around thirty seconds. It silences a large dining room faster than a microphone, which is why livery companies and City dinners still use it. A soloist is £250.
How long should music between dinner courses last?
Two or three minutes per piece. Five is too long for a room that has just been served. Pieces should be self-contained and cued by the toastmaster or banqueting manager on the night, rather than fixed to clock times that drift as the kitchen runs.
Where should music go in an awards dinner running order?
Between award categories rather than after a long speech, because a short piece resets the room's attention. If there is a charity appeal, put the music before it: a room that has just sung together gives more than one that has sat through three speeches.
How many singers for a Christmas gala dinner?
Four covers a dinner of up to about 200, and six suits a large banqueting hall or a room of 300 and above. Marquees are the hardest of the three rooms and want six. For a sung grace on its own, one voice is the right answer.
We sing at Christmas gala dinners, awards evenings and livery hall banquets across the UK, from a sung grace to a full after-dinner set. Send us the running order and we will tell you where the music should sit in it.
Text us on WhatsApp for the fastest reply, or call us on 07356 042468.