Exonian Profiles
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When China Forbes ’88 was 8 years old, she wanted to sing just like disco diva Donna Summer. Now as the lead singer for Pink Martini, a successful 10-piece ensemble that plays a wildly eclectic brand of smoky jazz and exotic pop, Forbes has developed her own distinct vocal style and achieved her own sort of pop diva status, albeit one quite different from Donna Summer. Summer never sang in nine different languages. Forbes describes the music of Pink Martini as “a cross between Edith Piaf, Chopin and the Buena Vista Social Club,” which is to say, it’s equal parts jazz, classical and Cuban, and defies easy categorization. “Our music was born of the lounge jazz tradition, but it’s much more classically based and percussive,” says Forbes. The band’s repertoire knows few boundaries, running the gamut from obscure foreign pop songs and movie themes—always sung in their native tongue, which might be Greek, Japanese or even Croatian—to cabaret standards like “Que Sera Sera” and classical warhorses like Ravel’s “Bolero.” “Pink Martini is successful because we have no specific audience,” says Forbes. “Our music is very accessible to people of all ages—grandparents, kids and everyone in between.” Indeed, since forming in the mid-90s, Pink Martini has developed a large and loyal international following. Their self-released CD, Sympathique (Heinz Records, 1997), has sold an impressive 500,000 copies and their songs have been featured in such movies as Nurse Betty, Josie and the Pussycats and Town and Country. They have become the unofficial party band at the Cannes Film Festival, where they have performed for several years running, and have toured throughout Europe, as well as Lebanon and Taiwan. Prior to joining Pink Martini, Forbes was living in New York City (where she had moved after graduating cum laude from Harvard) and fronting her own folk-pop band. At Exeter, where both her father, the late Cameron Forbes ’57 and sister Maya Forbes ’86 had attended before her, Forbes was a member of the Concert Choir, Glee Club and Peadquacs; she also studied guitar with Bob Squires and performed at coffee houses around campus. A career as a singer-songwriter made perfect sense. Starting out as a solo artist, Forbes began performing in small clubs and released an independent CD, Love Handle (November Records), in 1995. From there, she put together a full band and landed a demo deal with Columbia Records that, while it never panned out into a recording contract, led to songwriting collaborations with Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos. “Then one day in 1995, I got a frantic call from Thomas Lauderdale, a good friend from Harvard, who had just fired the lead singer in his band, begging me to fill in for some gigs,” says Forbes. The hitch: Lauderdale and his band, Pink Martini, were on the other side of the country in Portland, OR. “I had a lot of flexibility in my life at the time, so I dropped everything and flew out there for a weekend to do these concerts,” says Forbes. “Then the next month, I got another call. Thomas became very good at convincing me to fly out there.” As the frequent flier miles began to add up, Forbes became torn between her own band and Pink Martini. A turning point came when her father died of pancreatic cancer in 1998. “At that point I needed to make a dramatic change in my life, so I moved to Portland to sing with Pink Martini full time.” She has since purchased a house in Portland and was married this past October to Creg Valline, who owns a Portland optical shop that also functions as an art gallery. Pink Martini’s second CD will be released in the spring of 2002. For more information, visit www.pinkmartini.com. –Bill Ewing |
