On Saturday Thom and I had dinner at Trader Vic’s (the downtown San Francisco location), which was fun. We both love tiki, as you know. I think we had expected the Trader Vic’s experience to rely almost solely on the kitschy atmosphere, but we were a little surprised but of course pleased to find that the food and service were really good as well.
The main event of the evening was Pink Martini with the San Francisco Symphony! Pink Martini has been around for a while, of course, but I can’t believe I’m only just now getting into their music. I love them. It’s hard to describe their music, so I’ll leave it to what bandleader Thomas Lauderdale has said: “Pink Martini is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or 50s — but with a global perspective which is modern. We bring melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together to create something which is new and beautiful.” That they do. And China Forbes, their vocalist, has a sultry voice to die for. I totally need to get their CDs. They have three out so far, and their latest one (Hey Eugene!) was released in May.
By the way, one of their encore pieces was an instrumental (violin and piano) arrangement of an old Filipino song, “Bayan Ko” (“My country”). I vaguely remember the melody; my grandparents and parents sometimes sang it at parties with their townmates, where they’d sing old Tagalog songs around the piano. I always thought it was a bit corny, but I finally looked up the history and lyrics. Apparently it was written in the 1920s as a protest song during the American occupation of the Philippines, and has been a sort of anthem in every struggle since. I’ve been browsing for clips on the web just now, and not to sound like an old manong, but it makes me all misty-eyed to hear it again. Heh.
Pink Martini performs songs in several languages; I think they should take on some Tagalog! It would sound great.
» See also NPR’s recent two-part interview on Morning Edition.
5 replies on “Pink Martini”
Pink Martini is great! They were excellent when they were here in A2.
I’m so jealous. I love love love Pink Martini. I’ve never seen them live though. I’m going to have to dig out my CDs now that you’ve mentioned them so I can properly indoctrinate my son into the way of the Pink Martini.
thanks introducing me to Pink Martini. Nice music!
My first Pink Martini experience was back in the dot.com heyday of 1999. Gartner’s ITExpo was THE event in the tech world and it was in San Jose that year. They booked this really cool old theater in downtown San Jose and Pink Martini was the entertainment – have loved them ever since. Glad to see you’ve finally uncovered them!
[…] Symphony, and as expected they were amazing. We’d seen them here with the symphony in 2007, but this time I was on the ball when tickets went on sale, so we were sitting in the second row. […]