Rockers PINK

Thomas Lauderdale has studied history, worked in politics, loves to talk world affairs and has said he’d be interested in becoming mayor of his home town, Portland, Oregon one day. So how did he come to found a group with such a frivolous name as Pink Martini?

They’re a band who, after 17 years with six great discs under their belt, spend their time taking their vibrant, sexy shows of songs that cross genre, culture and age around the world to perform with orchestras in major concert halls from Turkey to Sydney.

“When we started the band in 1994 we were students and the name seemed fabulous and festive,” Lauderdale tells me from his hotel room in France, where Pink Martini have a huge following since one of their first releases, Sympathique, with its witty French chorus “je ne veux pas travailler” (I don’t want to work), caught the Gallic imagination. Fabulous, festive and light then?

“Er yes! Certainly in the early years. I was wearing cocktail dresses and it was very campy. Then it became more serious when we released our first album and the camp bit got erased and we became more earnest. We wanted to be a mini orchestra creating a beautiful, old-fashioned, symphonic pop sound.”

Lauderdale has joked that if the United Nations had a house band in 1962 then Pink Martini would have been it. So singing in various languages doing different versions of songs, do they want to be taken seriously? Lauderdale hums and haws and then hums and haws again.

“Part of our success comes from the fact that we are escapist. At the same time we started out playing at political functions and continue to play for progressive causes, championing things like affordable housing, civil rights, public broadcasting, music education in schools, libraries, parks for all, that kind of thing, so it is diplomatic in certain ways. The decision to play and sing songs with lyrics in different languages, especially during the George Bush years, really represented a different kind of America that was more Obama-esque.”

Pink Martini draw inspiration from Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 50s, hinting at Brazil, Cuba and tropical themes, with a hint of Humphrey Bogart. At the Usher Hall in Edinburgh on Tuesday their sound will be beefed up by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

“We do everything from the 2nd movement of Mozart’s violin concerto to an Afro-Cuban version of Ravel’s Bolero to songs we write in Italian,” says Lauderdale.

Lauderdale founded the group with singer China Forbes, with whom he wrote all the original Pink Martini songs and built up their eclectic “no holds barred” repertoire. Forbes’ pristine vocals and intelligent “girl next door having glamorous fun” look made them hugely appealing. The antithesis of both the corporate music business and corporate America, they became a byword for fusing the ethnic and the local without falling into cliché.

With Forbes taking the year off for medical reasons, Storm Large has stepped into her shoes. US reviews have been more than good, but has it changed things dramatically?

“Well, Storm has had a more rock’n’roll orientated career,” says Lauderdale. “It’s really been good for us, as she breathes new life into our songs, shifting the pace of shows reinvigorating the band like fresh air. Not that we were sitting on our laurels by any means.”

Pink Martini walk the right side of kitsch. There’s a tongue-in-cheek approach to arrangements as with their stirring ukulele-lead version of Auld Lang Syne which ends the classy Joy to the World album they released to acclaim last year (Lauderdale’s happy to be reassured that it’s sung in Scotland outside Hogmanay). And yes, Lauderdale may stand for mayor, if Pink Martini “ever dissipate”. Little chance of that for the time being though.

lPink Martini and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra play the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on 11 October