Chicago Corporate & Gala DJ

The rooms already booked me

The Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field. The Foundation Room at House of Blues. Hyatt. The American Cancer Society’s Skyline Soiree at Rockwell on the River. 100 Black Men of Chicago at the United Club, Soldier Field. The National Black MBA Association’s rooftop at VU, Chicago.

None of those organizations booked a DJ because he was cheap. They booked one because the event could not go wrong.

What a planner actually needs

You are not shopping for music. You are managing risk, and the DJ is one of the few vendors who can visibly ruin the night in real time. So here is everything you were going to have to ask for.

• Certificate of insurance. $1M per occurrence, $3M aggregate, Lloyd’s of London. I name your venue as an additional insured and turn the certificate around the same day. I have already done it for Guaranteed Rate Field, which required the White Sox, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and the City of Chicago on the same document.
• W-9 and vendor onboarding. DJ KMBRK LLC. Send me your portal and I will fill it out without you having to follow up.
• Clean edits. Radio versions by default at any event with clients, donors, staff or executives in the room. You do not have to ask, and you do not have to worry.
• Program pacing. Cocktail hour at conversation volume. Music under the program that does not fight the podium. A dance floor that starts the moment the last speaker sits down, not fifteen minutes later.
• Load-in on your schedule. Tell me the dock, the elevator and the window. I will be there for it.
• Dress. Black tie when the room is black tie.

Sound that fits the room

Two Electro-Voice EVOLVE 50M column arrays. They are slim towers rather than speakers on poles, which matters more than it sounds like it does: they disperse evenly across a ballroom instead of blasting the first six tables, and they stay out of your photographer’s frame and your step-and-repeat.

Two Xvive M5D wireless handhelds on 5.8GHz for the podium, the program and the awards. Not the 2.4GHz band that fights every phone and router in a full ballroom.

Lighting is a Chauvet GigBAR 3 ILS plus par cans that can uplight the room in your brand color. Two flagship Pioneer controllers, the DDJ-FLX10 and the DDJ-1000, so there is a live backup on the table rather than a promise in an email.

I walk your venue before I quote

Every ballroom has a quirk. The power is on the wrong wall, the ceiling eats the low end, the dance floor is stranded across the room from the AV feed. I find that out in advance, at no cost to you, and the number I give you accounts for it.

Which means the number I give you is the number.

Investment

Uplighting in your brand color is included.

Payment terms: a 50% retainer holds the date. If your organization cannot issue a deposit, a signed agreement and a purchase order will hold it just as well, with the balance invoiced net-15 after the event. I would rather work with your finance department than argue with it.

Coverage

Chicago, Chicagoland and the surrounding suburbs at no travel charge. Northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin quoted with travel.

The music

R&B, hip-hop, house, Afrobeats, Top 40, Motown and disco, read live off the room rather than run off a playlist. A corporate crowd is a harder room than a wedding: people arrive in work mode, they are being watched by their colleagues, and nobody wants to be the first one dancing.

Getting that room up is the entire skill. It is also why the review that matters most to you is not about music at all. It is the one where a client points out that I showed up to check her venue before I sent a quote.