Review: PINK MARTINI'S 30TH ANNIVERSARY at Kennedy Center

It was 30 years ago this week that a stylish Portland, Ore. lounge combo played its first gig, motivated by something with which Washington D.C. audiences could easily relate: politics.

To help defeat an anti-gay rights measure, young pianist Thomas Lauderdale gathered a band to play a political fundraiser.

Part of his inspiration was, of all things, the Del Rubio Triplets, a campy 40s singing group that had been rediscovered in the 80s doing covers of things like “Whip It.” Lauderdale had seen them on the “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special” (whose roster of guest stars he can still recite).

Anyway, the Del Rubios, who Lauderdale enlisted to play Portland nursing homes while also plugging the upcoming vote, gave him an idea. And suddenly the DNA of the long-running band Pink Martini was clear: Inspired by a glamorous age of cocktail bands, where musicality trumps camp, but only by a little. 

Washington Performing Arts brought the 10-piece band, augmented by three singers, to the Kennedy Center Monday for the celebration. And the uninitiated may have been surprised the size and enthusiasm of the crowd who attended. 

It started deliciously, with a stripped down version of“Boléro,” simply on piano, violin, bass and conga, before additional musicians joined in as Ravel's familiar march swelled. 

Pink Martini could have continued on this note — with smart, spare arrangements of tunes most knew, but instead emphasized its multi-lingual dance directions, possibly encouraged by their first international hit, the French language “Sympathique.”

It, and much of the material were handled by group's longtime singer China Forbes, in an elegant ivory gown. Soon, she was swinging through “Amado Mío” that dates from the 1946 film “Gilda,” to a songs in Spanish and Portuguese and Italian. 

Things paused for a dance competition that filled the aisles with largely elder boppers, who had been used to this cue. And then it was back to singing (and everyone sat politely again).

The musicians were first rate, from violinist Nicholas Crosa to the horns of Antonis Andreau and Lauderdale made sure each got a spotlight, however brief, and introductions. 

In the middle of the concert came the guest singer, Ari Shapiro, best known as an anchor on NPR's “All Things Considered.” The lanky vocalist was at first hard to square with the voice on the radio, but then again he told the crowd, “You look nothing like I imagined either.” 

His showcase “Finnisma di / La soledad,” a Spanish song with lyrics re-rewritten in Arabic was deeply applicable to the situation in the Middle East (but with a fussy introduction of adapted Chopin by Lauderdale, there was a lot going on). 

Shapiro was a passable singer, but was far surpassed by the lightly-used Jimmie Herrod, who excelled on his vocal on Ernest Gold’s “Exodus” that changed the lyrics from “This land is mine” to the more inclusive “This land is ours.” 

Herrod’s only other solo was in the encore, doing “Tomorrow,” the treacly “Annie” song that won him the golden buzzer on “America’s Got Talent.”

Lauderdale said he imagined Pink Martini as a band playing in the lobby of the United Nations in 1962, but overplayed his hand with an overstuffed medley of tunes in 22 different languages, with Forbes largely singing things from “Al bint al shalabiya” and “U plavu zoru” to “Pata Pata” and “Bella Ciao.” All the while, Shapiro shouted out the varied languages as if they were train stops: “Arabic!” “Croatian!” “Xhosa!” “Italian!” 

The 22-tune parlor trick proved ultimately exhausting. And yet there was more to the show, which, billed at 90 minutes, went more than two hours. Mainly, fans awaited the requisite finale conga line accompanying their rendition of “Brasil,” where the resulting aisle congestion obscured the music from the stage. 

Running time: Two hours, 10 minutes, no intermission.

Pink Martini's 30th Anniversary, presented by Washington Performing Arts, played the Kennedy Center Oct. 14. 

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