Saturday, October 4, 2025
As a courtesy to the artists and for the uninterrupted enjoyment of your fellow patrons, please turn off all electronic devices. No portion of this performance may be photographed, recorded, filmed, taped, broadcast or mechanically reproduced without the written consent of the Artist and/or the Presenter. Mayo Performing Arts Center is not responsible for lost or stolen items. Program subject to change.
Lineup
Thomas M. Lauderdale, bandleader and pianist
Ari Shapiro, lead vocals
Edna Vazquez, lead vocals
Jimmie Herrod, lead vocals
Storm Large, lead vocals
Thomas Barber, trumpet
Antonis Andreou, trombone
Phil Baker, upright bass
Dan Faehnle, guitar
Nicholas Crosa, violin
Anthony Jones, drums
Miguel Bernal, percussion
Timothy Nishimoto, percussion and vocals
Now in its 31st year, the unstoppable engine of joy that is Pink Martini continues to bring founder Thomas Lauderdale’s mission of multi-cultural connection and inclusion to concert stages on six continents. Presenting a mélange of catchy old-fashioned pop, global color, foot-tapping big band sound, and Hollywood glamour, Oregon’s most famous “little orchestra” performs music intended to appeal to everyone regardless of age or background.
Wanting an antidote to the lackluster bands playing fundraisers for his favorite causes, Lauderdale had a vision to bring more beautiful and inclusive musical soundtracks to galas for civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, public broadcasting, education, and parks. Drawing inspiration in music from all over the world, and hoping to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike, he founded Pink Martini in 1994. A year later, Lauderdale called China Forbes, his friend from Harvard, and asked her to join the ensemble; she relocated to Portland to become the band’s first full-time lead singer, and soon collaborated with Lauderdale on a number of the band’s favorite original songs.
October 4, 2025
As the band grew beyond its humble beginnings, Lauderdale lovingly welcomed more and more incredible musicians into the band’s family with open arms, creating regular collaborations with a wide variety of gifted singers, including the inimitable Storm Large, NPR’s dashing Ari Shapiro, the soulful Edna Vazquez, America’s Got Talent finalist Jimmie Herrod, and international singing sensation Meow Meow. On record, the band has also worked with iconic talents such as Japanese superstar Saori Yuki, Iranian legend Googoosh, Rufus Wainwright, Michael Feinstein, Georges Moustaki, Jimmie Scott, and many more.
Featuring a dozen musicians, Pink Martini performs songs in over 25 languages around the world. Says Lauderdale, “We’re very much an American band, but we spend a lot of time abroad and therefore have the incredible diplomatic opportunity to represent a broader, more inclusive America… the America which remains the most heterogeneously populated country in the world… composed of people of every country, every language, every religion.” The band made its European debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and its orchestral debut with the Oregon Symphony the following year. Since then, Pink Martini has played with more than 75 orchestras internationally, including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Other appearances include a performance at the official post-Oscars celebration Governors Ball, four sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, the opening party of the remodeled Museum of Modern Art in New York, multiple sellouts and a festival opening at Montreal Jazz Festival, and multiple appearances, including sellouts, at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
On its in-house label Heinz Records, Pink Martini has sold millions of albums worldwide and released over a dozen recordings.Pink Martini released the acclaimed EP Bella ciao in Spring 2025, featuring the anti-fascist title track sung by Storm Large. Early in 2026, the band will unveil its full-length collaborative release with Googoosh, and plans to have a new album out by the end of 2026. During China Forbes’s current sabbatical, the perpetually energetic and evolving band will continue to tour internationally with a number of its favorite singers, sharing its message of global community and joy through its music.
Thomas M. Lauderdale
Raised on a plant nursery in rural Indiana, Pink Martini bandleader Thomas M. Lauderdale began piano lessons at age six with Patricia Garrison. When his family moved to Portland in 1982, he began studying with Sylvia Killman, who served as his coach and mentor until her passing in 2023. Thomas has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras and ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Chamber Music Northwest and several collaborations with Oregon Ballet Theatre. In 2008, he played Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with the Oregon Symphony under the direction of Christoph Campestrini.
Active in Oregon politics since a student at U.S. Grant High School (where he was student body president), Thomas served under Portland Mayor Bud Clark and Oregon
governor Neil Goldschmidt. In 1991, he worked under Portland City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury on the drafting and passage of the city’s civil rights ordinance. He graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in History and Literature in 1992. He spent most of his collegiate years, however, in cocktail dresses, taking on the role of “cruise director” … throwing waltzes with live orchestras and ice sculptures, disco masquerades with gigantic pineapples on wheels, midnight swimming parties, and operating a Tuesday night coffeehouse called Café Mardi.
Instead of running for political office, Lauderdale founded Pink Martini in 1994 to play political fundraisers for progressive causes such as civil rights, the environment, affordable housing, and public broadcasting. In addition to marking three decades as bandleader of Pink Martini, Lauderdale has also completed three long awaited collaborations with longtime friends in the last decade. In 2018 he completed Love for Sale, an album of jazz standards with singer/civil rights leader Kathleen Saadat, that began as a gift to a few friends and ended up being a Billboard Jazz chartsranking album the month it was released. In 2019, Thomas Lauderdale and members of Pink Martini collaborated with the international singing sensation Meow Meow on Hotel Amour. Spring of 2023 saw the release of Thomas Lauderdale Meets the Pilgrims, his collaboration with Portland’s own surf-rock indie icons, Satan’s Pilgrims that was three decades in the making. Currently, he is collaborating with the iconic Iranian singer Googoosh, on a forthcoming album, and working on new tracks with Pink Martini.
On top of being bandleader and pianist for Pink Martini, Lauderdale currently serves on the boards of the Oregon Symphony, Pioneer Courthouse Square, and the Confluence Project with Maya Lin. He lives in Portland with his partner Hunter Noack.
One of the most recognized and trusted voices in the United States, Ari Shapiro has spent a decade as host of NPR’s flagship evening news program All Things Considered and the podcast Consider This. He has reported from above the Arctic Circle and aboard Air Force One. He has been a question on Jeopardy and an answer in the New York Times crossword puzzle. Among his many journalism accolades, he has won three national Edward R. Murrow Awards, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and was named Journalist of the Year by NLGJA, the association of LGBTQ+ journalists. His debut memoir, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening, was an instant New York Times bestseller. He also hosts the reality competition show, The Mole, on Netflix. His 12-part course for Wondrium, “The Power of Storytelling,” received a Gold Telly Award. As a performer, he has been a frequent guest singer with Pink Martini since making his debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009. He has performed with the band in some of the world’s most storied venues and recorded songs in a variety of languages. He also tours the country with the actor Alan Cumming in their two-man show, Och and Oy: A Considered Cabaret, as well as with his own original solo show, Thank You For Listening: An Evening of Songs and Stories. Ari was born in Fargo, North Dakota and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He lives in Washington, DC, with his husband and two dogs.
Edna Vazquez
Edna Vazquez is a fearless singer, songwriter, composer, and guitarist whose powerful voice and musical talent transcend the boundaries of language to engage and uplift her audience. She is a creative musical artist with a vocal range that allows her to paint seamlessly with her original material, an intersection of Mexican Tradicional, rock, pop and other genres. Edna’s passion for music and performance grew from her bicultural roots and, with songs deeply rooted in universal human emotion, she has traveled far and wide spreading her message of light, love and cultural healing. Vazquez has grown as a musical artist and collaborator over the last years, touring all over the world since 2017 with the acclaimed “little orchestra” Pink Martini, while still performing as a solo artist as well. In the past, she led her own band projects, the Edna Vazquez Quartet, the rock band No Passengers, and the latest, the Edna Vazquez Band. Vazquez also participated in the Latin Grammys with the all-female mariachi fusion band from New York City, Latin Grammy 2017 winners, Flor de Toloache and accompanying Natalia Lafourcade that night.
In 2022, as a soloist, Vazquez participated in two great events, one in Canto en Resistencia (Power to the People!) with the LA Philharmonic, with Davendra Banhardt, Ile, Silvana Estrada, Rodrigo Amarante, Jorge Glem, and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. She also appeared at The Hollywood Bowl with the acclaimed pianist Lang Lang and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performing DESTINO (1946), a film collaboration between Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney.
With Pink Martini, Edna Vazquez has performed with major Symphonies and in legendary concert venues all over the world, including London’s Royal Albert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, Red Rocks, the Montreal Jazz Festival, and many more.
In 2017, Vazquez released an EP album with Pink Martini entitled “Besame Mucho” and featuring her original single “Sola Soy.” And in the Summer of 2025, Edna Vazquez released her new album “Te Esperaba,” a collection of mostly original compositions based in traditional Northern Mexican styles like Banda and Norteño, and also in traditional Mariachi. Edna is proud to continue to venture into these traditionally male-dominated genres with her powerful interpretive voice.
Since late 2017 Herrod has been touring with Pink Martini across the US, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Europe. Outside of performing arts centers and jazz clubs, Herrod is regularly featured with major orchestras across the US, and has shared the stage with artists such as Lalah Hathaway, Brian Blade, Vince Mendoza, Renee Fleming, and many more.
With “a voice like a beacon of hope” (Seattle Times), vocalist Jimmie Herrod brings singular power and expressivity to his globe-trotting career as a singer, songwriter, and entertainer on stage and screen. Herrod first came to worldwide prominence as a finalist on the NBC nationally broadcast television show, “America’s Got Talent,” earning the rare “Golden Buzzer” recognition from actress Sofia Vargara and returning the following year on the AGT All-Stars series.
Storm Large
Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminatedin the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day. More recently, Storm appeared on the 2021 season of America’ s Got Talent.
Storm made her debut as guest vocalist with the band Pink Martini in April 2011, singing four sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Since then, she has toured with the band both nationally and internationally, and she is featured on their album Get Happy.
On the 10th anniversary of its premiere, Storm reprised her one-woman autobiographical musical memoir Crazy Enough at La Jolla Music Society and Portland Center Stage in 2019. The original production ran for an unprecedented 21 sold out weeks.
Storm has headlined with orchestras around the world, including the Chicago, Seattle, Houston, Detroit, Toronto, and BBC Symphonies, the NY Pops and Philly Pops; and the Louisville Orchestra, with which she recorded the 2017 album All In for the Decca Gold label.
Storm continues to tour concert halls across the country with her band Le Bonheur. In the fall of 2014, Storm & Le Bonheur released a record designed to capture their sublime and subversive interpretations of the American Songbook. Entitled simply Le Bonheur and released on Pink Martini’s Heinz Records, the recording is a collection of tortured and titillating love songs: beautiful, familiar, yet twisted … much like the lady herself.
Storm has sung with k.d. lang, Kirill Gerstein, John Doe, Rufus Wainwright, and George Clinton. Alongside Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey, Storm joined Michael Feinstein as special guest with the Pasadena Pops. Her memoir, Crazy Enough, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2012, named Oprah’s Book of the Week, and awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.
