Shaken and stirred

For the past 14 years, Portland, Ore.-based Pink Martini has served up an intoxicating mélange of orchestral-yet-poppy music. Their debut album, Sympathique, and its lead single of the same name illustrated the wit and depth of the ensemble as it marched across Europe and American public radio with a fanciful defiance belying the surrender and detachment in French lyrics which translate, in part, to, “I don’t want to work/I don’t want to eat/I only want to forget/And then I smoke/I already knew the scent of love/A million roses don’t embalm me as much as/now one single flower around me/Makes me sick.”

On the heels of their 2007 release Hey Eugene, the “little orchestra” will duck away from venues such as the Hollywood Bowl to play the Ventura Music Festival on May 4. Founded by Thomas Lauderdale, the group also features vocalist China Forbes and 10 other musicians who combine for a fanciful, cosmopolitan musical exploration. The Reporter caught up with Lauderdale to find out how that exploration began, where it has taken Pink Martini, and where it is going.

VCR: I lived in France when “Sympathique” was really an anthem there, so I’ve been familiar with Pink Martini for quite a few years, but when I try to describe the band, or the orchestra — and I’d love to hear your definition of what Pink Martini is — I have a hard time describing what type of music you are. How would you describe yourself?

Thomas Lauderdale: I guess I would say it’s maybe old-fashioned global pop. You know, a cross between a Hollywood musical from the ’40s with a global perspective. There are songs in 14 or so different languages, and anything from sort of samba from Brazil to French sort of 1930s-sounding anthems to Ravel’s “Bolero.” 

Over the years that you've performed this orchestra has evolved from four people to 12, and clearly that adds to the complexity of the music that you can produce and you can perform. Can you describe a little bit how it has evolved and also if there’s anything you regret that you can’t do now that it’s larger that you could have done when it was smaller?

I think when we first started playing it was very campy, and so our repertoire was things like the I Dream of Genie theme or the Pink Panther theme — a lot of Henry Mancini. I was wearing cocktail dresses and running around the stage, and at one point we had 10 different singers that would come on and off, and so it was a real zoo. Through the years I realized that camp only goes so far. I really began thinking about exploring this more old-fashioned sort of music with a more earnest eye and approach, and that’s when we started recording the first album [1997’s Sympathique]. I think if the band was really too campy, it just wouldn’t have the same sort of appeal somehow. I think that there’s an earnestness to the approach, which keeps it from sliding into a parody.

It’s interesting because you’re from Portland, and there seems to be something of a theme there of really creative endeavors that straddle the line between campy and more earnest … What do you think it is about Portland that generates that sort of energy?

Part of it is that, historically, it’s cheap. It’s the cheapest of the four major cities on the West Coast and that allows people who are artists to live comfortably in the city without going broke, and it provides a lot of sort of time and space for creativity to really blossom. I mean, March 4th [another Portland-based group] is a really perfect example. They came directly out of the peace marches when the war started. You know, March 4th, both the date and also the idea of marching forward, and there was a certain kind of moment, in the initial parade of 50,000, the March 4th moment was the most spectacular, it was the most joyous. So here we all were protesting the war, but the thing that really helped everyone the most seemed to really be March 4th.

You have your own political history with Pink Martini, correct?

Yeah, we started out of politics, playing at fundraisers for every cause imaginable here in town. And we still do some events these days, too.

Is there a specific cause that you’re still pretty passionate about?

There are so many. Like right now we are in the process where we’re about to do a series of concerts here in June called Fundfest, and each night the proceeds are going to go to a different charity organization here in town. It’s hard to know how to choose which charity to give to, because there are thousands of fantastic organizations all across Oregon. I guess the band has a history of being aligned with progressive causes, so civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, dancing lessons for everyone [laughs].

What's your most memorable performance?

I would say I love playing at the Hollywood Bowl. Last summer we did a show and closed out the season with fireworks, and we had Carol Channing as our special guest and Henri Salvador, who is the French Nat King Cole, and March 4th.

Going back to “Sympathique,” I was just perusing the lyrics again and I’m so amused because to me, it’s such a cheerful-sounding song, such a song of defiance, yet the lyrics are so dark in a way.

Right. That’s the thing I think in a lot of Pink Martini songs, there’s this sort of happy, skippy beat, but the actual texts are always sort of bittersweet or sad or, you know, really dark. I would say that's true for a song like “Hang on Little Tomato,” which has its roots in an advertisement for ketchup in Life magazine in 1964. Or even a piece like “Brazil,” where I think there’s a sort of bittersweetness to the twilight aspect of that piece. I would say that “Donde Estas, Yolanda?” is a sort of sad piece in a way, about looking for the Yolanda who was left and never been seen.

Do you think this is more of something that is a reference to a discordance in society, and a proposal that you can have both the cheerful, skippy beat in the midst of this sort of dark, brooding song?

Well, I think it makes it much more interesting if there’s a tug of war going on. I mean, if it’s a depressing song with pregnant lyrics and it’s slow and depressing, then it’s pretty drudgerous, I would say. You know, I think that part of the thought with the band is to really make things like that Mary Poppins song with the spoonful of sugar: “The spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” [Laughs.]

So I have to ask this question, because, I don't know, probably every interviewer asks this, but what would be in a Pink Martini?

You mean an actual drink?

Like if you had a drink that was the band the Pink Martini.

You know, in the end it might be Shirley Temple. But I guess, ideally, it would be a cosmopolitan of some sort, you know, a frosty cosmopolitan.

Well, that was going to be my next question, about being so cosmopolitan in your performance and just singing in so many different languages with so many different styles. Do you ever feel just disconnected? Do you ever feel rootless?

No.

What does it bring?

I think one of the wonderful things I think about the band is there is just sort of acceptance, you know, tacit acceptance that we are all sort of citizens of a gigantic, huge world, which is just complicated and wonderful simultaneously and full of languages and different sounds and different beliefs. Yet it is possible to come together for brief moments of happiness and sit next to the people that we’ve been arguing with and fall in love all over again. That’s the goal and that’s the hope.  

Ventura Music Festival presents Pink Martini on May 4 at 2 p.m. at Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura. For more information, go to www.venturamusicfestival.org