At work at the moment preparations are underway for one of the senior exec's leaving do. The venue has been hired, food and drink organised. Live music is outside the budget unfortunately (I have floated the idea of a duo), but the venue has a sound system we can play CDs or plug an iPod into. I've been asked to put the music together with the remit that "something jazzy would be nice". I'm working on the assumption that it should be the smoother side of jazz, so no B**ches Brew, Eric Dolphy or anything on the more avant garde side. The first trawl through my iTunes library resulted in approx 9 hrs of suitable(?) tracks. There's some classic big band, some funk, some latin, some standards, a few vocal numbers and some smooth jazz. I've got Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Miles, Oliver Nelson, Benny Golson, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock and a good sprinkling of more current artists on there. I'm attempting to make sure it's accessible but not drifting into elevator music. I can probably get away with one or two more challenging tracks but I don't want to risk having the plug pulled on me. I'm currently listening to the playlist on shuffle and weeding out anything that seems a bit too much. A really nice Joe Henderson version of A-train has just bitten the dust because of lengthy bass/drum solos.

What would you include with a similar brief? and what would you make sure you left out?

As a Jazzer of many years I would go for easy listening/smooth jazz.
How long is the do for?

In my experience playing live jazz piano in my trio for wedding receptions etc :after the first half hour nobody really cares (as they are more interested in drinking/talking) It's simply background music!!


Cheers

I'd say stay away from free jazz and steer more towards mainstream jazz that stays pretty much inside the changes- I'm sure you know what I mean. I'd try to avoid anything too crackly as well.