Pink Martini, a mixed cocktail

Pink Martini a mixed cocktail

Expect an eclectic repertoire in Hill concert

Pink Martini comes back to the Ann Arbor Summer Festival for a Saturday night show at Hill Auditorium.

BY JENN MCKEE

The Ann Arbor News

You don’t need a cocktail shaker to enjoy Pink Martini, a 12 piece jazz/world music orchestra playing Saturday at Hill Auditorium as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

After an enthusiastically received performance last year, the band is back to perform more songs from its charmingly eclectic repertoire.

“At one moment, you feel like you’re in the middle of a samba parade in Rio de Janeiro, and in the next moment, you are suddenly in a French music hall of the 1930s or in a palazzo in Napoli,” band founder Thomas Lauderdale told The News before last year’s visit. “It’s like an urban musical travelogue.”

Lauderdale, a classically-trained pianist, started the band in Portland, Ore., in 1994, after attending several dull political fundraisers for progressive causes. Lauderdale decided to form a group that would play music he’d like to hear at these events, and he had political aspirations of his own.

The plans were sidetracked, how-ever, once Lauderdale enlisted vocalist China Forbes, his former Harvard University classmate, and the band took off. Martini had a smash hit in France with “Sympathique,” which was used 'for a Citroen car commercial, and the group grew from four members to 12.

Even so, radio play still mostly eludes the hard-to-pigeonhole, (dare we say it?) cosmopolitan Martini, and the group has recorded all three of its albums on its own label, Heinz Records. Yet Martini has made gains through performances with orchestras in America and around the world; had a minor hit in America with the title track of the album “Hey, Eugene”; and last summer the group sold out a concert at Carnegie Hall.

“People really respond to the music once they hear it,” Lauderdale told The News. “It’s a matter of getting to them.”

Jenn McKee can be reached at 734-994-6841 orjmckee@annarbornews.com. 

PREVIEW

Pink Martini

What: 12 piece vintage-chic ensemble based in Portland, Ore. - that combines orchestral strings and smooth vocals to perform eclectic songs from around the world.

Where: Hill Auditorium, 825 N. University Ave.

When: Saturday, 8 p.m.

How much: $25-$55.

Info: 734-764-2538 or www. annarborsummerfestival.org.