Today is a very special day, friends. It is the 96th birthday of our dear friend and collaborator, the incomparable Norman Leyden!

Norman is one of the most talented, inspiring, and prolific musicians with whom we’ve had the good fortune to work. Norman began his professional music career with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra while attending Yale University in the late 1930s. After graduating from Yale in 1938, Norman joined the United States National Guard, eventually ending up in the US Army Air Force during WWII. During his time of service in the AAF, Norman conducted the Moss Hart Army Air Force’s “Winged Victory”, arranged for Miller’s Air Force Band, composed the theme music for the radio series “I Sustain the Wings”, and led the Air Force Falconaries of the Air Force Band of the Rockies in the PBC TV special “Glenn Miller’s Last Flight”.

But Norman wasn’t just an Army man. In 1956 he began work as the musical director for a variety of radio and TV shows, including Arthur Godfrey’s radio program, The $64,000 Question, and The Jackie Gleason Show. Read More...

Welcome back to our Get Happy guest artist spotlight series! Last month we featured our longtime friend and cohort Ari Shapiro, who sings “Yo te quiero siempre” on Get Happy (out in only 5 days!). In this installment we’re shining our spotlight on the dazzling, dynamic, and trail-blazing cabaret superstar, Meow Meow!

Thomas and Meow Meow have been working together for years, but “I’m Waiting for You” is their first studio collaboration. Meow has been named a “cabaret diva of the highest order” by the New York Post, One of the Top Performers of the Year by The New Yorker, and “nothing less than revelatory” by The Australian. She has sold-out seasons from New York’s Lincoln Center and Berlin’s Bar Jeder Vernunft to London’s Apollo Theatre, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Sydney Opera House.

In other words, she’s been a very busy kitty.

We could go on and on describing how charming, talented, and hilarious Meow is, or how heartbreaking, terrifying, sexy, and sincere her performances are, but we thought it would be better to just give you a taste of the cat herself. Read More...

Have you heard? Pink Martini is the official Ambassador of Happy!

And as our first duty as Ambassador, we are going to brighten the grumpiest day of the week: Monday. In celebration of the impending release of our new album Get Happy, we’re giving Portland a fantastic free show next Monday, September 16, at 6pm in Portland’s Pioneer Square!

Get Happy will be in stores on September 24, but you can get your hands on all of this happiness eight days early! Join us for the free (because paying is so bah-humbug) show and be the first person on your block to blast Get Happy from your stereo speakers.

Get ready to smile from ear to ear as Thomas, China, Storm, and the entire band perform songs from the new album as well classic Pink Martini favorites. We can’t wait to see you there!

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Recording our upcoming album, Get Happy, was no small feat. It involved months of planning, long hours in the studio, and fruitful collaboration with some of the most creative and accomplished musicians working today. We feel extremely lucky to have worked with such brilliant artists as Rufus Wainwright, The von Trapps, Meow Meow, Philippe Katerine, Norman Leyden, and Phyllis Diller.  Their broad talent brought diverse and engaging ideas to the album, and made the recording process even more rewarding for us.

These musicians are all part of the  Pink Martini family now, and we would love for you to get a taste of their luminous personalities and talents. That’s why we’ve started this blog series. Over the next month we’ll introduce you to some of the lovely people with whom we had the good fortune to collaborate on Get Happy.

We’re starting the series by featuring one of our long-time friends and cohorts, the dazzling Ari Shapiro.

Ari first recorded with us in 2009, singing “But Now I’m Back” on our fourth studio album, Splendor in the Grass. Read More...

We’re thrilled to be playing shows this weekend at the beautiful McMenamins Edgefield. These shows represent a number of firsts for the band, and we couldn’t be more excited.

To start with, these are the first shows in our beloved hometown of Portland on our Get Happy tour. We haven’t played an official show in Portland since our 2012 New Year’s Eve show at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and we’re thrilled to be back.

Second, this is the first time we’ve played at historic McMenamins Edgefield. If you aren’t familiar with the venue, it was originally built in 1911 and today is home to 74 acres of farmland, a European-style hotel/hostel, organic gardens, and, of course, the concert venue.

Lastly, and perhaps most notable, is that these shows will be the first time our fabulous vocal talents, China Forbes and Storm Large, perform a full show together in Oregon. The two have performed duets together at past shows, and shared the stage for a whole show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, but never in our home state. Read More...

Hello Friends + Family!

In January 2012, Thomas Lauderdale and our trusty audio engineer Dave Friedlander flew to Los Angeles to visit Thomas’s new friend, Phyllis Diller. While there, Thomas bought a dozen of Phyllis’s bright colorful paintings… and they recorded Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”, which turned out to be Phyllis Diller’s final recording, and became the soundtrack for the many tributes to her when she passed away six months later.

Thus began the 18-month odyssey to record Get Happy, the long-awaited studio follow-up to 2009’s Splendor in the Grass, an odyssey which featured a calvacade of vocal royalty visiting our Portland studios, including Australian cabaret sensation Meow Meow, sunny French eccentric Philippe Katerine, the handsome and brilliant radio superstar Ari Shapiro, warm-hearted wunder-siblings The von Trapps, and a riveting appearance by the exquisite Rufus Wainwright!

Anchored by our beloved and elegant vocalist China Forbes, alongside our dazzling co-lead-singer Storm Large, finally making her recording debut with us, the album features sixteen songs selected and arranged by Thomas, including songs in German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Farsi, Turkish and Romanian. Read More...