Creating the Right Emotional Temperature for the Room

Guitarist Greg Chako shares some great advice in professionalism.

For most of my life, I’ve been introduced as a jazz guitarist. While that’s true, it’s only part of the story. Over the years I’ve come to believe that the best hospitality musicians are not primarily performers. They are stewards of an experience. That may sound like semantics, but in hospitality the distinction matters enormously. Guests rarely separate the food, the service, the lighting, the conversation, the room, and the music into separate categories. They experience all of it as one thing. An evening. A memory. An experience. The music is one of the tools used to create it.

I first began to understand this while living and performing in Singapore. One of the most influential people in my career was M.P.S. Puri, then Director of Food & Beverage at Raffles Hotel. Years later he would become Executive Vice President of Operations for Raffles International and eventually work with Rosewood in Europe. When Puri first called me, he wanted my jazz trio for the legendary Bar & Billiard Room at Raffles. There was only one problem. I was in the middle of a contract at the Pan Pacific Hotel. Puri was accustomed to getting his way. But I asked him to reverse roles for a moment. “If I leave my current hotel in the middle of a contract to work for the lounge down the street, how would you feel about me? How would I protect my reputation?”

To his credit, he understood. Looking back, I don’t think Puri hired me because I was available. He hired me because I wasn’t. By refusing to abandon a commitment, I demonstrated the very thing he was looking for: professionalism. That conversation became the foundation of a years-long relationship built on trust. A few months later I was performing six nights a week at Raffles. One of the first things I learned there was that guest satisfaction and management satisfaction were not separate things. When guests complimented the music, I would often encourage them to tell management.

Before long, letters and comments began arriving from guests all over the world. Management saw them. The guests felt heard. The value of the entertainment became visible I still have a letter from Puri dated October 9, 1995, welcoming me to the Bar & Billiard Room and thanking me for helping make it a “Connoisseur’s Haven” through Cuban cigars, French chocolates, Scottish single malts, and American jazz. He specifically mentioned the positive comments from guests. Those comments mattered. Not because they stroked my ego. Because they demonstrated that the music was contributing to the guest experience. Years later, Puri called me into his office after taking over operations at Singapore’s Fullerton Hotel.”

Do you know what I did yesterday?” he asked. “No.” “I drove all the way across town to hear a band.” Then he looked at me and said something I’ve never forgotten. “I don’t have time to do that. I want you to take all my entertainment headaches away.” That wasn’t a request for a guitarist. It was a request for trust. Soon I was managing a monthly entertainment budget of roughly S$60,000, assembling and supervising multiple bands while continuing to perform elsewhere six nights a week myself. The lesson wasn’t about music. It was about responsibility. The best hospitality professionals don’t hire talent. They hire reliability. They hire judgment. They hire people who make their lives easier. Whether I was working in one of Asia’s great luxury hotels or playing a neighborhood restaurant in Cincinnati, the principles remained remarkably similar. Guests want to feel welcome. Management wants happy guests. The details change. Human nature does not. Three decades later, I find myself applying those same lessons every Saturday night at Sorrento’s Italian Joint in Cincinnati. Steady jazz residencies are not easy to find. When I first met the restaurant’s General Manager, we had a frank discussion about expectations. Guest satisfaction. Consistency. Reading the room.Substitutes. Music played on breaks. Business realities. It was a meeting of the minds. But getting the gig was only half the battle. Keeping it was the real test.

The original plan was for our residency to end during the slower summer months. Instead, we stayed. Why? Because the numbers supported it. More importantly, the experience supported it. Over time people began returning. Some came back regularly.  A few even showed up on Friday nights by mistake and left when they realized we only played Saturdays. One day the General Manager made a comment I’ll never forget. “I know not all these people are coming for the food. Some of them are coming for you.” That wasn’t a compliment to my musicianship. It was an acknowledgment that the music had become part of the restaurant’s identity. Part of the experience. Recently, I was reminded of another lesson. The restaurant was unusually quiet. No bustling crowd. No children running through the room. No energetic Saturday-night atmosphere. Just a handful of tables celebrating birthdays, spending time together, and enjoying each other’s company. Many musicians would respond by trying to create excitement. Play louder. Play harder. Play faster. We did the opposite. We played softer. Slower. More thoughtfully. The room didn’t need more energy. It needed support. It needed space. That’s what reading the room means.

Not imposing your will upon it. Responding to it. The next day one of those guests wrote about how the music, conversation, and company had combined to create a memorable evening. 

That’s hospitality. Not performance. Experience. Along the way I’ve learned another lesson that many musicians struggle to accept. Talent matters. But attitude matters more. I’ve replaced highly skilled musicians who couldn’t function as part of a team. I’ve hired less experienced musicians who were willing to listen, learn, and improve. The latter almost always succeed. Hospitality is a team sport. Guests don’t care whose ego wins. They care how they feel. In recent conversations with hospitality professionals and music curators around the world, I’ve been encouraged to see these ideas expressed in different ways.

Some talk about atmosphere. Others talk about guest psychology. Others talk about the subtle ways music influences behavior and conversation. They’re all describing the same thing. Music is not the product. Guest experience is the product. Music is one of the tools used to create it. Perhaps the greatest lesson hospitality ever taught me is this: Musicians are often trained to think like artists. Hospitality taught me to think like a host. The older I get, the less interested I am in being the center of attention and the more interested I am in helping create memorable experiences for other people. When guests linger longer, return with friends, celebrate milestones, tell management about their experience, and leave feeling better than when they arrived, the music has done its job. I know my place in this business. It isn’t to be the main attraction. It’s to provide the perfect ambience with music.

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