FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 17, 2017
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
Suave, saucy “little orchestra” Pink Martini returns to the Hop October 17
HANOVER, NH—Pink Martini, the suave, globe-trotting “little orchestra,” returns to the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College on Tuesday, October 17, 7 pm in Spaulding Auditorium.
A rollicking tour-de-genre that one moment seduces with musical postcards from Brazil and the next swings to neo-classical, lounge, or Japanese pop, Pink Martini performs its multilingual repertoire on concert stages throughout the world. This Hop appearance—its fourth—marks the band’s 23nd year as the global ambassador of cosmopolitan joie de vivre.
Pink Martini’s merry multi-nationalism has never been more on point, such as on its ninth and most recent studio album, Je dis oui!, a cavalcade of songs in French, Farsi, Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Xhosa and English. Je dis oui! (French for “I say yes”) comes from one of the album’s songs, Joli garçon (“Pretty boy”), co-written by Pink Martini for the 2016 film Souvenir, starring French actress Isabelle Huppert.
“Pink Martini is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or ‘50s, but with a global perspective which is modern," says founder, artistic director and pianist Thomas M. Lauderdale. "We bring melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together to create something which is new and beautiful."
Founded in 1994 by Lauderdale, who was joined a year later by vocalist China Forbes, Pink Martini made its European debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and its orchestral debut with the Oregon Symphony in 1998. Two decades-plus later, the band has performed on every continent but Antarctica, on the world’s great concert stages and with more than 50 symphony orchestras. In 2014, Pink Martini was inducted into both the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. Forbes alternates with singer Storm Large as the band’s featured vocalist.
Pink Martini embraces popular song from around the world and across the decades—a “highly polished combination of class and kitsch, swooning nostalgia and deliriously romantic melodies” (The Telegraph, UK). While most of the neo-swing acts that emerged in the 1990s favored a combination of jump blues and early rock ‘n’ roll, Pink Martini distinguished itself by offering a blend of jazz (mainly swing), world music, cabaret, lounge, and 1940s-1950s film music. With an ensemble that includes brass, strings and multiple percussionists, the group can dip and dive from Cole Porter and Duke Ellington to French icon Edith Piaf to Latin greats such as Xavier Cugat, Beny Moré and Tito Puente. Wrote The Times (London), “Multilingual and defiantly cosmopolitan, Pink Martini have vacuumed up songs from Turkey, Japan, Romania and beyond, using lush string and horn arrangements that hark back to the days before rock ‘n’ roll…Pink Martini concerts are all about striking an insouciant pose in the face of life's vicissitudes, as if nothing has changed since the age of Fred and Ginger.”
Said Lauderdale, “We’re very much an American band, but we spend a lot of time abroad and therefore have the incredible diplomatic opportunity to represent a broader, more inclusive America…the America which remains the most heterogeneously populated country in the world…composed of people of every country, every language, every religion.”
RELEVANT LINKS
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/pink-martini
http://pinkmartini.com/
CALENDAR LISTING
Pink Martini
“If the UN had a house band in 1962,” Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale says, “we’d be that band.” This “little orchestra” is a rollicking tour-de-genre that one moment seduces with musical postcards from Brazil and the next swings to neo-classical, lounge or Japanese pop—all mixed in the great cocktail shaker of jazz. Pink Martini performs its multilingual repertoire on concert stages throughout the world; its Hop return marks the band’s 23rd year as the global ambassador of cosmopolitan joie de vivre.
Tuesday, October 17, 7 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
$35-60, $10 Dartmouth students
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, celebrating diversity and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. In addition, the Hop continues to mentor young artists, support the development of new work and provide a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.