When we met Pink Martini artistic director and pianist Thomas Lauderdale after the 10-piece Portland, Oregon, group performed with the Kansas City Symphony two years ago, he handed us a couple of CDs that became our bread and butter. The first was a mix eclectic enough to crash an iPod (a Kenyan folk song performed by the Muungano National Choir, followed by "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by Peggy Lee). The second, similarly informed by Lauderdale's wide-ranging taste, included working mixes of Pink Martini songs that wouldn't see release until last October's Hang On Little Tomato. Tomato, which ends the seven-year famine following Pink Martini's equally juicy, standards-filled first album, expands on the group's one-part-globetrot, one-part-foxtrot cocktail with darkly playful songs sung in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Croatian. But that would be just so much Berlitz without the sophisticated melodies, this time supplied mainly by Lauderdale and his cohorts. If you take a translator to just one show this year, make it Pink Martini.
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