Frequently asked questions about hiring the New York Holiday Singers as Christmas carolers for your holiday events:

We started our company and the Singers to bring our deep love of the holiday season's music (and a premium level of entertainment) to holiday season parties & events. Our arrangements of traditional carols and other holiday favorites are musically rich, requiring a high level of commitment and rehearsal from our Singers. When you book the New York Holiday Singers, you're not going to get a group of people that are part-time members singing relatively simple 2 to 4-part carols; you're booking finely-rehearsed & blended ensembles singing professional-level music.

Our performers range from talented choral singers to performers on- and Off-Broadway; to musicians, artists, teachers, coaches, and more. We know our reputation and our ability to compete in a crowded industry rests entirely on providing the absolute best musical entertainment you can possibly book, and making sure our customers are happy and proud to have us entertain their guests.

Making the Singers happen each year is a massive undertaking, with auditions and rehearsals beginning in summer. Doing this work is the team behind New York Holiday Singers, Inc.: Jen, Greg, and Jeff, our Executive Director, Creative Director, and Sales Director, respectively. For instance, Greg has over two decades' worth of experience providing music & entertainment for events, and all three members of our management team adore the holiday season: its music, its flavors and aromas, and the best it can bring out in people. They love it so much that they, too, sing in multiple groups!

When you get groups of wonderful performers like this together, give them fantastic music, have them rehearse and bond for months… Well, then you get magic. That's why you should book the New York Holiday Singers.

The New York Holiday Singers have a standard booking fee of $225, plus a flat rate per-Singer per-hour, depending on day of the week and time of day. Minimum bookings are four Singers for one hour, but you can book up to the whole available ensemble of 17 for up to three hours if you want! (Longer bookings are possible, but we have some requirements/riders for them — so feel free to contact us with your event details and we'll see what we can do.)

You can find our complete pricing schedule on our online quote & booking page, but here are some examples:

• Four (4) Singers for one hour during the day on a weekday would be just $525.
• Five (5) Singers for two full hours on a weekend evening would be $1,175.

Travel outside of Manhattan, western Queens & Brooklyn, or the Bronx may incur an extra charge. Our online booking & quote page can give you an instant price quote based on the date, time, and duration of your event — no email or phone call required!

The Singers are perfect for just about any kind of holiday event or Christmas party singers performing live & acappella can add great ambience to your:

• Private party
• Public event, such as tree lighting
• Corporate event or holiday party
• Luncheons & dinners
• Retail activation
• Brand/marketing program or activation
• Background entertainment
• Sing Along (including optional professionally-printed, a la carte Sing-Along Songbooks which we've been offering since 2010! They make great mementos.)
• Cocktail hour
• … and many, many more.

If you have an event not listed above, why not contact us today and see if it's a good fit?

Our company does not offer Victorian-style or "Dickens" costumed carolers or characters. There are several companies that provide costumed carolers, and we instead choose to focus our time and very limited budget on our high-quality music and overall presentation. If the Singers or the Men Singing Carols are not what you need, and if your event absolutely calls for Victorian costumes, please get in touch. We can recommend other groups in the area that may fit the bill.

However, even with our more modern attire, many of our clients that originally wanted costumed carolers have found that our energy, performance, and professional-level music we bring to events provides more than enough holiday cheer!

The New York Holiday Singers sport a casual, fun, holiday-themed look, with sweaters, chinos/slacks (for the men) or tights/dresses (for the ladies), cardigans, and other "festive casual" attire, as you've seen in the pictures on this site. We also offer a more formal look, with the men in blazers and optional ties, and the ladies in nice dresses. For outdoor performances, our Singers appear in festive ski and outdoor wear. Across all looks, our Singers feature matching hand-knit red scarves. If you'd like something specific, such as Santa hats and other accessories, please get in touch with us! The Singers never wear jeans, sneakers, or other overly-casual attire to your event — unless, of course, you've specifically requested something like that.

Absolutely! It's very common for brands to provide attire for us to wear in activations, or for clients to request we blend in with their event's color palette. Sometimes, we're even still able to wear our signature red scarves, too.

Please reach out to us and we can discuss how best for us to fulfill your vision.

It's a common request from our customers to build song setlists that aren't overtly religious in nature and trend more toward the secular side of holiday music. Because our songbook runs the gamut from classical to contemporary, from religious to secular, we can easily prepare a set excluding overtly religious music. Or, featuring it.

You bet we can! Our Creative & Musical Director, Greg, also happens to be an award-winning lyricist, having lengthy experience crafting memorable, poetic, catchy lyrics. He also handles all of the original songs & lyrics for the New York Holiday Singers, which we have been told are likewise wickedly catchy. Lastly, Greg worked with many major brands in his previous day job as Chief Brand Officer for a digital agency to craft lyrics and phrases "on-the-fly," so you've not only got an award-winning lyricist in your corner, but also one with real-world real-time brand experience that can work exceedingly quicky! (An additional fee may apply.)

Of course we can, and we've done so dozens of times! Our groups were the first in New York City to offer professionally-printed, full-color "Sing-Along Songbooks" custom-made for each event for a small fee. No photocopies here — these are full-color, high-quality songbooks assembled and bound with the same care as everything else we do!

"But," you may ask, "what about your groups' best-in-class music that's more difficult & musically gratifying than regular, 'easy' carols?" Well, first, thank you for reading all of the text on our site! But, to answer your question: our Singers also learn special "Sing-Along versions" of several popular holiday songs. These sing-along versions are slower, more traditional, with no key changes, and are easier for your guests to join in on than our performance songs.

You bet! The Singers rehearse for months to master their challenging music. Because of the complexity of our professional-level arrangements, at events we hold small, half-sheet-sized mini-binders or slates that contain the set list, starting notes/pitches, song information, and lyrics. You can see these mini-binders in some of our pictures — but we work hard to still exciting to watch and engage with the audience and each other. No one likes to see a perfomer buried in a large binder!

We've done both many times, and we (and the crowds) really enjoy it. We've even led the Santa Parade at Bryant Park for several years running!

As we're based out of New York City, travel to locations accessible by MTA subways is included. (However, if it will take us over an hour or so to get to your location from midtown Manhattan, there may be a small travel surcharge for our time.) Beyond that, such as travel to New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, and even further, we will provide you a quote for any travel costs, as we'll usually have to rent a car or take the train as well as paying our Singers for their time. When you begin speaking about travel outside of the tri-state area, additional costs such as lodging may come into play. Why not contact us and we'll see if we can work something out?

All of our Singers are their own people with their own performance, musical, and fashion styles! Rather than "casting" or trying to fit our Singers into narrow characterizations ("the sassy one," "the prim one," etc.), we want and encourage the real Singers to shine through. We find that there's strength in this variety.

We've discovered over the years that it's more more interesting for us to allow our Singers to just be themselves rather than playing a character, and this has allowed us to collaboratively discover how each individual Singer approaches songs, groove, and fun performance. No quartet or performance is always the same, and it's gratifying to see each Singer discover fun performance moments with other Singers as the lengthy rehearsal process and shorter holiday season go on.

And, no, we don't allow our clients to choose their Singers except in special situations such as friends & family bookings. That said, all of the Singers go through the same vigorous annual rehearsal process, so with us there's no "A-Team", alternates, or ringers — everyone is equally finely-rehearsed and ready to spread some serious cheer!