Pink Martini Celebrating International Friendship Day, New "Let's Be Friends" Merch Available at the Pink Martini Store

PINK MARTINI   CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP DAY  NEW “LET’S BE FRIENDS” MERCH AVAILABLE AT THE PINK MARTINI STORE “LET’S BE FRIENDS” SINGLE OUT NOW

In celebration of today’s International Friendship Day, Pink Martini are asking fans to purchase an MP3 of their new single “Let’s Be Friends” (Heinz Records) and pass along a copy to a friend as a token of their friendship.  The band have also made friendship bracelets. Those, along with “Lets Be Friends” buttons, are now available at the Pink Martini merch store here: https://pink-martini-heinz-records.myshopify.com/ Earlier this summer Pink Martini released “Let’s Be Friends” which brought back together the songwriting duo responsible for the band’s biggest hits - bandleader Thomas Lauderdale and singer China Forbes. At release, China said: "'Let's be Friends' is the first song Thomas and I wrote with writer/producer Jim Bianco; we challenged ourselves to write an old-fashioned song that was NOT about love. We tried to make a song about friendship and all the ways friends can complement each other, but in the end it still has an undercurrent of romance because, well, that’s unavoidable!”  Listen to “Let's Be Friends” here:

The New York Times has called singer China Forbes “an unpretentious, pitch-perfect chanteuse” and that sentiment holds true for “Let’s Be Friends.” The track also highlights the band’s penchant for crafting music that led Variety to say, “impressive at every musician’s station, this ensemble produces music that’s charming and elegant … " and The Washington Post notes, "this is rich, hugely approachable music, utterly cosmopolitan yet utterly unpretentious. And it seems to speak to just about everybody.”  In 1994 Lauderdale had finished college and returned to his hometown of Portland, OR.  He was working at City Hall with an eye towards running for office. Being a classically trained pianist, music was always in the background, and he formed his “little orchestra” Pink Martini as a means to provide music for political fundraisers for progressive causes near to his heart - including civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, and public broadcasting. China Forbes, Lauderdale’s friend from their college days at Harvard, joined the group the following year, and the first song they wrote together, “Sympathique” (Je ne veus pas travailler), became an overnight sensation in France, where it remains a mantra (“Je ne veux pas travailler” translates to “I don’t want to work”) for striking French workers. Politics continues to be a focal point for the band, as both Lauderdale and Pink Martini lend their voice to progressive causes.     Throughout their history, on record and live in concert, Pink Martini has featured a dozen musicians with songs in 25 languages, and they perform their multilingual repertoire on concert stages and with symphony orchestras throughout the world. Pink Martini’s albums have collectively sold over 3 million copies worldwide, all on the band’s own label, Heinz Records.

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