On 26th July 2012 we headed to Raymond Blanc's two-Michelin starred restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, a beautiful countryside hideaway in Oxfordshire. We've been lucky enough to perform at Le Manoir on three occassions now, and each time have loved the venue, its atmopshere, and the fantastic reception we receive from the staff at the venue, who always treat us as their guests. We've also developed an addiction to their freshly-squeezed orange juice!
Le Manoir is a beautiful venue for small, intimate weddings - the private dining room, La Belle Époque, is a completely unique in our experience. It has its own private garden, and a nicely-sized foyer area adjacent to the dining room. We have now performed both outside in the garden (although on that occasion we did have to dodge showers!) and inside the foyer, and both areas were ideal for live music.
On this occassion we were performing as a jazz quintet, featuring piano, bass, drums, saxophone and female vocals - an ideal line-up for this space. Whilst our jazz quintet doesn't have the large repertoire of our 9-piece function band, it is fantastic for weddings such as this where the bride and groom just want a small amount of dancing music at the end of the evening to round off their special day.
We started our performance with Angela and Paul's first dance request, Ray Lamontagne's "You Are The Best Thing". We followed that with a few of our favourite dancing songs such as Jump Jive & Wail and Sir Duke, finishing just before midnight in time for carriages.
As always we had a fantastic time at Le Manoir, and can't wait to go back there later in the year!
Many thanks to Barker Evans for their beautiful photographs - and apologies for putting them alongisde our iPhone photos!
Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Oxfordshire, 26th July 2012
Photography courtesy of Barker Evans
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