Palm court

[4] 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.

[3] In the UK, broadcast relays of light music from The Grand Hotel Eastbourne by the BBC began in 1925 with an orchestra under the direction of the violinist Albert Sandler (1906-1948).

[10] By 1942 Sandler was billed as directing "The Palm Court Orchestra",[11] 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.

Max Jaffa was leader from 1956, and also performed as a member of the Palm Court Trio with Jack Byfield (piano) and Reginald Kilbey (cello).

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.

The palm court of the Carlton Hotel , 1899, captioned in The Illustrated London News as "A Fashionable Resort of Today"
The Palm Court of the London Ritz in 1907
Howea forsteriana, the Palm Court at the Ritz, 2020