A little orchestra that began as a cure for boring fundraisers

Thomas Lauderdale had worked in politics since high school in Portland, Oregon, and he found the music at most fundraisers loud and boring. His remedy, in 1994, was to start a band of his own. Pink Martini crosses classical, Latin, traditional pop and jazz, and its members like to call it a little orchestra, with ten to twelve musicians on stage.

The next year he called China Forbes, a colleague from Harvard, and asked her to join. She is monolingual but sings in 15 languages. The repertoire is wildly diverse: Lauderdale describes it as a musical travelogue, where one moment you are at a samba parade in Rio and the next in a French music hall of the 1930s. Their first single, “Sympathique”, came out in 1997 and was nominated for Song of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique in France.

The band made its European debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and its orchestral debut in 1998 with the Oregon Symphony under Norman Leyden. Since then they have played with more than 50 orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Boston Pops and the BBC Concert Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. They opened the Walt Disney Concert Hall, played two sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall and two at the Paris Olympia, and performed at the Governor's Ball after the 2008 Academy Awards.

Co-lead vocals are shared by China Forbes and Storm Large. Lauderdale says the band, though very American, spends a lot of time abroad and gets to represent a broader, more inclusive America. That idea runs through every track, including something as small and playful as “Hey Eugene”: a politician's instinct for bringing a mixed room together, turned into music.