Scoring Crane Club: Jazz, Neo-Soul, and Electronica for a New NYC Standard

I love the buzz around new hospitality openings, and of the many we’ve had the chance to play a part in, Crane Club is one of the most exciting.

The project brought together legendary industry veterans — Chef Melissa Rodriguez, Jeffrey Katz, and Tao Group Hospitality — around an impeccably designed space with a clear focus on culinary excellence, aiming to set a new standard for gatherings in New York City. Being part of shaping the soundtrack for a venue with that level of ambition, and that level of talent already in the room, is exactly the kind of project we built Raina to work on.

Building the sound with the venue’s creative team

We worked directly with Creative Director Ronnie Madra on the playlist for Crane Club, which was one of the more genre-adventurous programs we’ve built recently. The final sound blends contemporary jazz, neo-soul and R&B, lo-fi hip-hop, and chic electronica — a combination that could easily feel disjointed in the wrong hands, but that creates an atmosphere that reads as both elegant and energetic when it’s balanced correctly. That balance is really the whole job: each of those genres carries a different energy and cultural reference point, and getting them to sit together as one coherent identity rather than four separate moods stitched together is where the actual curation work happens.

Why the collaboration model matters

Projects like Crane Club are a good illustration of how we approach music for a serious hospitality concept. It’s not a matter of handing over a pre-built playlist and calling it done — it’s working directly with the venue’s own creative leadership, in this case Ronnie Madra, to make sure the sound reflects a vision that’s specific to this room, this concept, and this moment in New York hospitality, rather than a version of “upscale restaurant music” that could be dropped into any comparable venue in any city.

That’s the same principle behind everything from multi-zone hotel programming to a single restaurant’s dinner-service playlist: the music has to be built for the specific space and the specific concept, informed by people who actually understand what that concept is trying to be, rather than assembled from a generic template and hoped into place.

It’s an honor to help shape the soundtrack for a venue as ambitious as Crane Club, and we’re looking forward to seeing how the space and the sound continue to evolve together as it settles into New York’s hospitality scene.