The term
palm court orchestra is often used to describe a small orchestra playing light classical music. By the start of the 20th century most luxury hotels, cruise ships, department store restaurants and cafes employed small orchestras or chamber groups to entertain their patrons. The
Savoy Hotel in London, for instance, catered for the elite of English society and to visiting foreigners. "Sedate couples on the dance floor would enjoy waltzing to
The Valeta and
Destiny, with perhaps an occasional two-step in between". At the Savoy in the 1920s,
Carroll Gibbons directed two orchestras: Carroll Gibbons and the Boy Friends provided light music for afternoon tea in the Thames Foyer, while the
Savoy Orpheans played dance music in the evenings, with a nod towards jazz. (The hotel didn't have a palm court, the lounge hall was used for the relays).
Alfredo Campoli founded his similar "Salon Orchestra" in the 1930s. By 1942 Sandler was billed as directing "The Palm Court Orchestra", actually made up from a unit of the BBC London Studio Players, a pool of musicians put together in 1941 to form ensembles of different sizes on demand. The ensemble secured a regular broadcast slot on Sunday evenings on the programme
Grand Hotel which ran from 1943 until 1973. Reginald Leopold followed on from Jaffa with a 17 year stint at the orchestra. The fourth movement of
Samuel Barber's ballet suite
Souvenirs (1950) is titled 'Two-Step (Tea in the Palm Court)'. Originally for piano four hands, it was orchestrated in 1952. Barber wrote of the suite: "One might imagine a divertissement in a setting of the Palm Court of the Hotel Plaza in New York, the year about 1914, epoch of the first tangos."
Lennox Berkeley's
Palm Court Waltz, Op. 81 No 2 (1971) is an orchestral work written for an entertainment put on at the
London Coliseum by
Richard Buckle, and arranged for piano duet in 1971. ==Palm Court Palms==