Pink Martini

The sounds of Pink Martini, a Portland, Oregon ensemble, have always blended acoustic textures drawn from jazz, world traditions, cabaret, lounge, and mid-century film scores, yet this range has only deepened the group’s devoted audience. Their arrangements fuse swing rhythms with the legacies of Cole Porter and Duke Ellington alongside the French stylings of Edith Piaf and the Latin innovations of Xavier Cugat, Beny Moré, and Tito Puente. Additional currents from French chanson, Afro-Cuban salsa, Argentinian tango, Brazilian samba and bossa nova, Italian folk melodies, Greek rembetiko, Middle Eastern forms, and Asian repertoires have further shaped their palette. China Forbes, born April 29, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, serves as lead vocalist and has delivered performances in no fewer than ten tongues—English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Greek, Arabic, and Japanese among them. Founder and pianist Thomas M. Lauderdale, born July 14, 1970, in Oakland, California, captured the ensemble’s international perspective in 2004 with the remark: “I think it’s important to be a citizen of the world as opposed to being a citizen of this particular country. Part of that means studying other people’s languages.”

Lauderdale assembled Pink Martini in 1994 and engaged Forbes as principal singer the next year. Neither musician originated in Portland; Forbes, raised in Cambridge, first encountered Lauderdale during their shared years at Harvard University in the late 1980s—she received her degree in 1992—while Lauderdale spent his childhood in California and Indiana before relocating to Portland as a teenager and returning after completing his own studies at Harvard. Forbes issued the solo album Love Handle in 1995, though Pink Martini soon claimed the bulk of her attention. The lineup has also featured Gavin Bondy on trumpet, Robert Taylor on trombone, Phil Baker on acoustic bass, Nicholas Crosa on violin, Brian Lavern Davis on drums and percussion, Timothy Nishimoto handling percussion and vocals, and Derek Rieth and Martín Zarzar on percussion. Their first release, Sympathique, appeared on the band’s independent Heinz Records imprint in 1997, followed by Hang on Little Tomato in 2004 and Hey Eugene! in 2007, all issued through the same label. Heinz next presented Forbes’ second solo effort, ’78, in 2008, an introspective adult-alternative collection reminiscent of Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan.

During 2009 the group issued the concert DVD Discover the World: Live in Concert, documenting their 2008 performances, and unveiled the album Splendor in the Grass that autumn, which incorporated guest work by Chavela Vargas and Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. In 2010 they delivered the holiday collection Joy to the World, spotlighting esteemed Japanese vocalist Saori Yuki, with whom they again partnered the following year on 1969, a set of reinterpretations drawn from that year’s notable songs. Recording for their sixth album commenced in January 2012 and encompassed a version of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” that featured Phyllis Diller, who died that summer; the finished project, Get Happy, emerged in 2013. Pink Martini subsequently joined forces with Sofia, Melanie, Amanda, and August von Trapp—great-grandchildren of the family whose flight from the Nazis supplied the basis for The Sound of Music—resulting in Dream a Little Dream, a blend of standards and original material released in March 2014. That August the band mourned the death of conga player and percussionist Derek Rieth, commemorated by a memorial drum parade the next month. Pink Martini resurfaced in 2016 with Je de Oui!, an album that welcomed contributions from Rufus Wainwright, Ari Shapiro, and Ikram Goldman while venturing into Armenian and Xhosa idioms for the first time and presenting a singular take on the Cole Porter standard “Love for Sale.”