At Villa Montalvo the ceremony and the party are a long brick path apart, so I build two sound setups and plan the walk between them. I DJ and MC private events and weddings here, and I play company dinners, fundraisers and milestone parties too, from the first song to the last one you chose.
Villa Montalvo is a Mediterranean Revival house in the Saratoga foothills, built between 1912 and 1914 as the country home of a San Francisco mayor who became a U.S. senator. He left the estate for the development of art, literature, music and architecture, and a nonprofit runs it today. The official name is Montalvo Arts Center. Most people still call it Villa Montalvo.
The house sits against a wooded slope on about 175 acres in Santa Clara County, with formal gardens, an arboretum and trails through the redwoods. The gardens were laid out with advice from the designer of Golden Gate Park. Marble statues, iron gates, cypress trees, wisteria over the pergolas.
For an event, all of that means distance. The ceremony gardens, the veranda and the rooms inside are separate places, and your guests walk between them. Outdoors the sound has nothing to bounce off. Indoors it has hardwood floors and paneled walls, and it bounces off everything. I plan for both.
An open-air, white-columned pavilion at the end of a wide brick path in the Italianate garden, with marble statues, iron gates and cypress trees. Nothing out here reflects sound, so the speaker gets aimed at the guests and the vows go through a wireless mic.
A classically styled garden with statuary, behind the Spanish Courtyard. Another ceremony spot, and a different walk to dinner. I ask which garden you've reserved before I plan a single cue, because it changes where the gear goes and how long the move takes.
The Main Hall, Library, Dining Room and Solarium: hardwood floors, carved and paneled walls, original light fixtures, French doors to the outside. Speakers go where the dance floor gets the energy and the tables can still talk.
The veranda wraps the house and looks over the Great Lawn. In my photos from here, dinner is outside the villa and the welcome goes out on a wireless mic. Open air, so a speaker near the tables does the work that walls do indoors.
A courtyard behind the villa, suited to a smaller open-air cocktail hour. If the venue allows music out here, it stays under the conversation, and it can run as an additional sound zone so the main rig stays put while your guests are arriving.
On an estate this spread out, the work is done before anyone arrives.
The Love Temple or the Oval Garden gets its own small setup, and it's separate from everything else. The main rig is already built and tested where the party happens, so nobody stands around waiting while I carry gear up a brick path.
Hardwood floors, paneled walls and French doors make the villa's rooms bright to the ear. I set levels for that. Dinner and cocktail music sits where people can talk over it, then I build it as the plates clear and the floor opens.
This is a historic house with gardens reached on foot, so I don't assume anything about the carry. I ask the venue where vendors unload, how far it is to each spot and whether there are stairs. Then I arrive early, with backup equipment, and have it all running before your first guest.
Montalvo sets the music end time and I get it from them for your date. Then I build the timeline backwards from it, with the walk from the garden to the house counted in. Entrances and toasts land early, dinner breathes, and the dance floor in the paneled hall gets its full stretch.
The cypress-lined rose garden path at Villa Montalvo
At the decks in the paneled ballroom, uplighting on
My rig and speaker set up in the ballroom
Ceremony at the garden pavilion, set up with sound
The walk down the aisle path toward the pavilion
The processional comes down the garden path
The pavilion where ceremonies are held, set for guests
The cypress allee leading to the ceremony pavilion
The iron garden gate at the start of the path
First dance in the hall, the whole room watching
The couple in the thick of their own dance floor
Late in the night, the circle opens up
The welcome on the wireless microphone at dinner
Dancing under pink uplighting, seen through the ballroom doors
Someone has to know when the ceremony or the program starts, who has the microphone for the welcome, when your guests move from the garden to dinner and how much dancing is left. That's me. Before your event we go through a planning questionnaire and planning calls, your must-plays and do-not-plays, the exact versions of the songs you love. By the time I arrive I already know your day inside and out, and I'm the MC for every announcement, entrance and toast.
What I don't do is guess at the house rules. An estate run by an arts nonprofit has its own, and they can change. So I ask.
The rooms inside the villa are carved and paneled wood with original fixtures. Uplighting along those walls gives the wood a color and lets the room change between dinner and dancing. A monogram or pattern can go on the floor or a wall, and dance-floor lighting tells everyone where the party is.
Each of those is an add-on you choose in the instant estimate. I clear the lighting plan with the venue first.
Villa Montalvo hosts weddings, and it also hosts private, social and nonprofit events. This is a house that has had guests from the start: its first owner hosted writers, artists and actors here. A rehearsal dinner on the veranda. A milestone birthday in the paneled rooms. A fundraiser, a company dinner or a holiday party where the music stays out of the way until it's time to dance.
I play all of those, along with mitzvahs and quinceaneras. If you want a sound more than a program, a Selector Session is a set of my own programming for a welcome party, cocktail hour, dinner or after-party. And The Journey, a live sound bath that flows into a facilitated ecstatic dance, can be its own event or one part of a bigger one.
Every room, from Napa Valley to the coast, is on the rooms list.
Your date, which garden or room you have in mind, and the feeling you want in it. I'll take it from there.