Pink Martini // The Dome

Pink Martini is a bit of a departure for Brighton Fusion, branching out into music that your sophisticated older cousins and aunts would love.

Pink Martini is a 12-piece orchestra, based in Portland, Oregon, but no stranger to the continental scene, making their debut performance at Cannes Film Festival and regularly performing world-wide. They are not shy to success either. Their first album, “Simpatique”, which was released in 1997, sold 750,000 copies world-wide and the band have received gold and platinum albums.

The Brighton show was part of their European tour, promoting their latest and third album “Hey Eugene”. Smooth songstress China Forbes graced the Dome’s stage, a young voice with old-world sensibilities and the finest backing band a girl could ever ask for. The title song from the album “Hey Eugene” is probably the only Norte-americano song of the bunch, based on the true-story of a guy who asked for Forbes’s number at a party in New York City but never phoned. The rest of the album gallop through the world music genres.

Brighton Fusion’s latest photographer and contributer, Yanna Papadopoulou, insisted on covering the show for one of her favorite bands for her Fusion debut.

The Brighton Dome have a strict policy of no flash photography, which is a major limitation on a lights-out show. Luckily, the band were amenable enough to allow Yanna to take a few snaps during their first three numbers, and the photos give an idea of a more elegant musical nights, a clear departure from your normal live music nights in grafitti-scrawled toilet venues. Not that there’s anything wrong with those places or those nights!

With a gentler, autumnal feel in the air, I was pleased to be introduced to music that was something a bit more laid-back that I could relax at home with. Okay so I don’t spend a lot of time relaxing at home, but it’s the thought that counts!

Yanna writes of Pink Martini’s Brighton show:

Pink Martini at last in Brighton! The Brighton Dome was full of people of various ages and cultures who at the end fully applauded the band! Pink Martini is a jazz band combining Latin, Lounge, and classical music with Cuban Jazz, Brazilian Marches and ‘film noir’ soundtracks!

In the concert you could be listening to Rio De Janeiro Samba, seconds later, be shifted away into a late 30’s French Music Hall atmosphere or in a palazzo in Napoli! In a second I found myself in Greece years ago, but happily I was travelling from country to country! I wish I could stand up and dance and sing with their beautiful melodies and lyrics! A wonderful night in Brighton with Pink Martini’s songs from different places all over the world like Japan, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain, and China created scenery totally eternally optimistic, hopeful, and of course romantic (as Pink) and stimulating (as Martini).

Pink Martini describe themselves as archaeologists and they really are. They bring old melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together and they create something totally new, contemporary and at the same time time-honored! Just an incredible tempo for the viewers, an amazing performance. As one reviewer wrote in the Spokesman in 2002, “This is the music that everyone likes, kids like this music, my grandparents like this music, my dog likes this music.”

Their album “Hey Eugene” is out now and can be bought from the Pink Martini Store, Amazon.com and iTunes!

http://www.pinkmartini.com/

The Dome
Currently no Website

29 New Road
Brighton
BN1 1UG
01273 709709
Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm

Promenade: seated + standing up to 1800 (600 Standing and 1200 seated)
Lyric style (proscenium arch) up to 1550

Email not known

Words: Amy the Film Maker and Yanna