A corporate awards ceremony with Mike Paul-Smith Music
In November 2021 Capital Sounds Showband (from Mike Paul-Smith) were invited to perform at The Bonus Arena, Hull for a Wren Kitchens corporate event.
The event was integrated with Wren’s Christmas 2021 marketing campaign which prominently featured the Sammy Davis, Jr. classic If They Could See Me Now. The event was also an award ceremony to congratulate staff who had achieved particular sales success.
Special requests
We started the evening’s performance with a performance of If They Could See Me Now – a special request from the client as the song had recently featured on Wren’s Christmas television advertising campaign. We transcribed the record accurately so that our 10-piece band line-up could recreate the original as precisely as possible, and it certainly launched things with a bang.
Award ceremony stings
It was then into the awards, and we accompanied the ceremony with “stings”. These are short but flexible bits of music, which you’ll have heard at the Oscars or BAFTA awards, to fill the gap between the announcement of the award winner and the time it takes them to get to the stage. This can obviously take some time – and there is no way of knowing how long the award recipient might want to hang about on the stage having their photo taken – so we design our stings to be flexible and adaptable, lengthening them on the fly as necessary.
The party
After the award ceremony was over, it was on with the party. The Capital Sounds Showband entertained the crowd (mostly consisting of people in their 20s and 30s) with a great mix of soul, disco and Motown crowd-pleasers alongside up-to-date pop music.
Production support
One of the challenges of the event was the huge stage, and the very particular stage design the client required – which meant that four instrumentalists were on one side of the stage, with the other half perhaps 10 metres away on the other side – and the vocals somewhere in between!
To deal with the difficulties in communicating across the stage, the amazing team from White Event Production set up an in-ear monitoring and talk-back system, meaning that we could each hear and stay in time with each other. At this size of event, hiring a production company is a solid investment as they have the knowledge and expertise necessary to encounter the challenges that particular client briefs may throw at them – and White Event Production are just one of the many amazing production companies we are delighted to work with on a regular basis.
The pictures tell the story of a great party, which was a really special event to be involved in.
