Thu 6/30 @ 8PM
For more than 25 years, music lovers with wildly eclectic, international tastes and a keen, sophisticated sense of the absurd have reveled in the music of Pink Martini.
The mini-orchestra was started by classically trained pianist Thomas Lauderdale in Portland, Oregon in 1994, originally to write & perform music for political fundraiser, mostly for progressive causes. He began to write material with a former Harvard classmate China Forbes, who now often serves as the band’s vocalist and co-produces their albums with Lauderdale. That material dips its toes in classical, jazz, Latin, pop and even the once-reviled, now often lionized genre of easy listening music.
Since that time, the group has played their multi-genre, multi-lingual music all over the world, with orchestras, in concert, and at high-profile special events. They’ve performed with dozens of orchestra and collaborated over the years with some off-the-wall artists such as Broadway chanteuse Carol Channing, the Sesame Street cast, or ’50s film bombshell Mamie Van Doren and the Van Trapp family of Sound of Music fame. On recent recordings, they’ve worked with Barry Humphries (Dame Edna), Rufus Wainwright, pianist/film composer Michel Legrand and many many many more. They have a large following in France.
Obviously, the membership of such a large, long-running group, comprising a dozen members, has changed over the years, but Forbes will be onstage with them at Cain Park’s Evans Amphitheater when the group returns to Northeast Ohio. Go here for tickets.
cainpark.com/Pink-Martini-featuring-China-Forbes