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BIO

PINK MARTINI
featuring CHINA FORBES

For the past thirty years exactly, Pink Martini has taken us on exhilarating journeys, filled with swing and elegance. Born in Portland (Oregon) in 1994, this American group was discovered in France in 1997 after an invitation to the Cannes festival, for a chic show case. China Forbes’ voice infuses a kitsch, jazzy charm, revealed by Sympathique, a theme sung in French with a delicious American accent and which gave its name to their first album.

Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes, the two founders of Pink Martini, are highly educated: they met at Harvard. He was studying literature there, while listening to Poulenc, Bach and Beethoven. She was studying graphic arts. China has a French grandmother; Thomas has a passion for opera.

Sympathique, their song first released in 1997, is inspired by a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire, formerly set to music by Francis Poulenc: “My room has the shape of a cage/ The sun passes its arm through the window/ But I want to smoke to create mirages/ I light my cigarette in the light of day / I don’t want to work, I just want to smoke.”

This praise of laziness is tinged with a delicate heartache, which you’ll hear when China Forbes sings: “I’ve already known the fragrance of love… [but now] I don’t want to have lunch, I just want to forget him.”

A pianist and Pink Martini’s artistic director, Thomas Lauderdale, a composer, the adopted son of a gay pastor, dresses it all up in nuances made in Paris. Beneath a polite exterior, subtly old-fashioned sometimes, always glamorous, Pink Martini’s music exudes humor and rebellious fantasy. The name of their group was invented by Thomas Lauderdale, a fan of Black Edwards films — Diamonds on Sofas, The Pink Panther, the soundtrack of which was composed by Henry Mancini. Loving night bars, the musician then slipped into the aesthetic of cocktails. Panther pink, and martinis on the rocks – white vermouth, olive, ice cubes. In the style of James Bond himself.

On the piano, Lauderdale reinterprets the great classics of music from the fifties and sixties in his own unique style. He draws from almost all continents: here a rumba, there a salsa, then a samba, why not a chachacha, why not a classic French song, a jazz standard or a bolero? Timeless, Pink Martini, between covers and original compositions, is sung in more than twenty languages — French, English, Italian, Thai, Russian…

As a lyricist and singer, China Forbes can use vibrato in the manner of Edith Piaf, adopt a flirtatious and whispered tone in Japanese, and achieve a series of micro-tones in Arabic. Global, but cultivating a rare intimacy with its multilingual audiences, Pink Martini has really caught on to what our contemporary world is all about.

The fact that advertisers quickly seized on it is not a surprise. In 1997, “I don’t want to work” (“Je ne veux pas travailler”) caught the interest of creative advertisers in charge of the campaign to launch a new Citroën car model: the Xsara Picasso. Their slogan: “Imagination first”. In their ad, on a chilling assembly line, fanciful robots begin to tag cars as they are being put together. Since then, Sympathique has infused French popular culture, to the point of showing up among the Top 10 of songs most often sung in street demonstrations!

We cannot reduce Pink Martini’s success to a single hit however: indeed, Pink Martini has recorded and released eleven albums, through their own label — Heinz Records — an impressive succession of multilingual singles. Pink Martini grew into an orchestra with brass, congas, strings, dancers… With meticulous arrangements, together, they created an alternative and pop universe: Piensa en mi, Brazil, Una Notte in Napoli, essentials which do not exclude nods to Maurice Ravel or Gene Krupa.

A multifaceted group, Pink Martini often invited friends to their events: a director (Gus Van Sant), a journalist (Ari Shapiro), a fashion guru (Ikram Goldman), a civil rights activist (Kathleen Saadat) and many musicians and singers, such as Jimmy Scott or Rufus Wainwright. In 2011, China Forbes, who had lost her voice, was dubbed for a while by Storm Marge, a sexy rocker.

Since their debut with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra in 1998, the group has played with more than fifty orchestras around the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London, orchestras in residence with all these prestigious venues where Pink Martini performed. In France, their appearances at the Olympia, the Grand Rex, and in the best festivals (Nuits de Fourvière, Jazz à Vienne, etc.) confirm the public’s fondness for Pink Martini.

Pink Martini is also known for its social and political commitments. The group has taken part in numerous charity events and worked with organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the Refugee Council, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. Their music has also been used in political campaigns, notably in support of LGBT rights.

Véronique Mortaigne

ON TOUR

Pink Martini featuring China Forbes

BOOKING

Jocelyn Mathieu
jocelyn@visiteursdusoir.com

VIDEO CLIP