DJ Reese is a corporate event DJ and emcee in New York City, and the founder of No Stress Zone Entertainment. He runs music and hosting for conferences, galas, brand activations and company celebrations, with clients including Fox Corporation, Danone North America, PUMA, LIDL US, the Intrepid Museum and Baccarat Hotel New York.
Need a host for the program? See our corporate event emcee in New York City page for local case studies and hosting details.
More than 6,500 people on the flight deck of the Intrepid.
Two million meals packed.
The energy held the whole time.
That was 9/11 Day in New York. It is the hardest kind of room to run. A service event needs momentum or the packing line slows down. It is also September 11th in this city, and most people in that room are carrying something. Music that reads as a party is wrong. Music that reads as a funeral kills the pace.
You cannot solve that with a playlist. You solve it live, over several hours, by watching how the room responds and adjusting.
That is what we do at corporate events in NYC. Read the full 9/11 Day case study.
NBC affiliate 11Alive covered that same 9/11 Day event live from the Intrepid Museum and caught us on camera keeping the room’s energy up. Broadcast news coverage, not just our own highlight reel:
Brands we work with
What we actually do
Most entertainment vendors deliver a plan.
We deliver a plan and then change it.
Every event has a moment where the energy drops. The keynote runs long. The bar line empties. The room comes back from lunch and will not re-engage.
It happens at almost every event. The difference between a room that recovers and a room that never does is whether someone saw it coming and knew what to do about it.
Music, mic work and pacing are the tools. Reading the room is the skill.
Preparation is what makes it look effortless. Before your event starts we know your run of show, your speaker order, your award count, your load-in window, and the two or three points in your timeline most likely to sag.
The work
9/11 Day. We have worked it every year since 2020. September 2026 was the 25th anniversary and our seventh year: four days, September 8 to 11, as emcee and DJ, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the packing floor on day two. In 2025 at the Intrepid: 6,500+ volunteers, over 2 million meals packed, energy held the entire time.
PUMA activation. We built the room around one question. Why would someone want to stay. Right audience, right music, right pace. $70,000 in sales in three hours.
LIDL US. Seven years as their activation specialist. First booked through SoHo Experiential, then hired direct by LIDL US. Grand openings across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, including Kips Bay and Williamsburg.
Fox Corporation. Three events, two consecutive years. Fan Fair for America’s 250th at Current, Chelsea Piers.
Intrepid Museum. Hired directly for their own internal corporate event in 2024, separate from the 9/11 Day work we do at the same venue.
Hard Rock Hotel New York and Baccarat Hotel New York. Both booked us directly, for their own programming.
New Kids On The Block. Emcee and DJ for the experiential activation.
Danone North America. Creating Change, with Matt James.
New York Red Bulls. FTF News. New York Cares.
Two decades working New York rooms. 10 years in radio, including Z100 New York, SiriusXM and 98.7 Kiss FM. We have opened for The Eagles and Chicago.
121 Google reviews. 5.0. See client results.
What clients say
DJ Reese is the absolute best. He was not only a dream to work with but his ability to read the crowd made our large corporate event a huge success. Can not wait to work with him again.
Kristi Curcio — SVP, Ad Sales Strategic Initiatives, Engagement and Events, Fox Corporation
We have had to hire DJs for countless events. DJ Reese is the best of the best. Can not beat his attitude and energy each time we have him out at an event.
Matt Meier — Marketing, Experiential and Partnerships, LIDL US
We would highly recommend hiring DJ Reese for your event. He was such a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Super organized and listened to any input we had. DJ Reese is so professional and nice and he is the best. Our customers really enjoy his selection of music. We love him here at PUMA.
Suzie Nguyen — PUMA
Best corporate DJ. Not only is Reese very energetic, he is also flexible when it comes to asking for song requests on the spot. Reese has an extraordinary vibe and knows how to hype up the crowd. He will be our go to DJ for every Baccarat Hotel event hands down.
Amada Acosta — Baccarat Hotel New York
Professional, attention to detail, and plays to the crowd. Lifting any setting he entertains.
Alex Tarlow — SoHo Experiential
We hired DJ Reese to DJ our Awards event in NYC, and he truly was the best corporate DJ we have ever worked with. From our initial call, he was professional, responsive, and easy to communicate with. He played walk-up music as our guests were called to the stage to accept awards, as well as during cocktail hour and dinner. Our clients loved the songs he chose for their walk-up music.
FTF News — Awards Event, New York City
Who books us in NYC
Corporate event planners and meeting planners running the show.
Experiential agencies producing activations for brand clients. SoHo Experiential is one of them.
Internal teams in HR, comms and marketing running their own event, often for the first time.
Different jobs. Same problem. Somebody has to own how the room feels, and it cannot be the person also running the timeline.
Events we run
- Conferences and summits
- Awards nights and galas
- Brand activations and product launches
- Executive dinners and leadership receptions
- Networking and client events
- Holiday parties and company celebrations
What New York demands
June 2026. The FTF Awards at the Hard Rock Hotel.
Vice President JD Vance was in the city that day. Our usual entrance was closed.
Fifteen extra minutes on foot with a dolly full of equipment. Five more standing in a verification line.
Twenty minutes gone. No warning, no way to plan for it that morning.
We made our call time. On the buffer we used to run, we would not have.
Now we arrive two hours before every event. Not because setup takes two hours. Because New York can take twenty minutes from you and never explain why.
That is what planning for this city actually means. Load-in windows in Manhattan are measured in minutes. Freight elevators are booked and shared. Rooms we work often, like Cipriani, The Plaza and the Ziegfeld Ballroom, are union houses. Their own labor rules. Their own house sound. Their own limits on what an outside vendor can touch.
None of that is visible to your attendees. All of it decides whether you start on time.
We settle what we can before the day. Load-in confirmed with the venue. Ownership agreed with your AV team. A setup built to fit the room instead of fight it.
Then we build in the margin for the part nobody can confirm in advance.
What booking includes
- Pre-production call and run of show review
- Coordination with your venue and AV team
- DJ and emcee for the full program
- Professional sound sized to your room
- Backup equipment. Nothing about the day depends on one piece of gear working
What Fortune 500 Planners Vet Before They Book in NYC
The Vetting Checklist
A Fortune 500 track record, not just a demo reel. Anyone can cut a highlight video. What planners ask for now is a specific list: which brands, which room sizes, which formats. A corporate event DJ NYC teams can vouch for should be able to name real activations, not “corporate clients available on request.”
Program fluency, not just music knowledge. The best New York corporate event DJ operators can run a rundown, cue a video package, hold a transition while AV swaps a mic pack, and never let dead air become the story of the event. That is a production skill, not a playlist skill.
Insurance, contracts, and vendor paperwork that match enterprise procurement. Fortune 500 events run through legal and procurement review. An operator who cannot produce a certificate of insurance or a real contract within a day is an operator who has not done this at scale before.
References that are actual planners, not just testimonials on a website. The operators worth booking will connect you directly to a marketing director, an events lead, or an executive assistant who booked them before, someone who will answer honestly about how the day actually went.
How to Actually Vet References
Asking for references is standard. Actually calling them is where most planners stop short. A quick five minute call with a past client answers questions a demo reel never can: did the operator show up on time for load in, did they adapt when the run of show changed mid event, did they need to be micromanaged or did they run the room independently. For a program as high profile as the annual 9/11 Day Meal Pack at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, that track record over seven consecutive years is the kind of reference that speaks for itself, ask any corporate event DJ NYC candidate for something comparable before signing.
A planner who takes fifteen minutes to make two reference calls before booking a corporate event DJ NYC will almost always end up with a smoother event day than one who books off a website alone.
Questions we get asked
How far ahead should we book?
Six months for corporate events in NYC. April through December is our busy stretch, and dates in that window go early. If your event is in that range, the calendar is the constraint, not the planning.
What if our date is sooner than that?
Ask anyway. We were hired for 9/11 Day in 2020 under 30 days out, after their corporate DJ came down with COVID. They have brought us back every year since. Short notice is harder, not impossible, and it is worth a call before you assume the answer is no.
Do you emcee, or only DJ?
Both. Most of our corporate bookings in New York are both. Splitting them adds a handoff, and handoffs are where timing breaks.
Can you work with our venue in-house AV?
Yes. In most Manhattan rooms that is the arrangement. We settle who owns what in pre-production, before load-in.
What does it cost?
Corporate events in New York run $2,500 to $10,000. A single evening booking, a reception or an awards dinner, sits toward the lower end. A full day program, a conference day, a sales kickoff day or a day of service pack where we are on site from the room opening through the evening event, sits toward the top. Where you sit in the range depends on hours, room size, and whether you need DJ and emcee together. See corporate emcee pricing and corporate event DJ pricing, or run the pricing calculator for a scoped number.
Do you travel outside New York?
Yes. We work nationally, and most of our bookings involve travel, including New Jersey, Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Book a corporate event DJ in NYC
Tell us what you are building and we will tell you how we would run it.
Financial services in New York
We hosted and DJed the FTF News Award Show at the Hard Rock Hotel New York in 2025 and again in 2026, and we DJed an internal employee celebration for MSCI at 250 Greenwich Street on October 23, 2024. Financial services is one of the largest corporate event buyers in this city and it is two different rooms: a compliance shaped awards program on one night and a large institution celebrating its own people on another. We have worked both.
Comparing us against other New York corporate DJs
If you are still shortlisting, we wrote the comparison ourselves and named the other companies in this market rather than pretending we are the only option. It covers what actually separates one corporate event DJ from another in New York and how to read a quote properly. See best corporate event DJs in NYC and how to compare them.