Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale teams up with the Oregon Symphony (original) (raw)

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/THE OREGONIAN

Since the age of 12, Thomas Lauderdale has had one piano teacher, Sylvia Killman. He still calls her Miss Killman, and she still gets exasperated with him. But she's never had another student like him. "I have to be extremely critical," she says. "He wants me to be when he's getting ready for something."

Thomas Lauderdale is scared.

In 36 hours, he'll walk into the glare of the enormous stage inside Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and take a seat at a Steinway concert grand piano in front of the Oregon Symphony. The crowd will cheer their hometown boy, expecting a show, because that's what his band Pink Martini has always delivered.

Only this time, he's not with the band.
As the applause dies, the diminutive pianist with the blond hair will adjust his seat, nod to the conductor and the kettledrums will begin George Gershwin's brash, little-known, relentlessly challenging, 30-minute Concerto in F.

Lauderdale has a pretty good idea how things will go, but the piece is relatively new to him -- and things can happen in a live performance. He could flub the notes. Lose his place. Blank out.

If Pink Martini were the back-up band, no worries. They can play their sultry version of "Bolero" in their sleep. But this is a symphony orchestra, and if something goes awry, he won't be able to fake his way out of it. Well, he could try, but his friends in the Oregon Symphony would know -- and the humiliation would be unbearable.

Which is why he's practicing night and day. Hour after hour. Measure after measure. It's driving his partner nuts. His piano teacher, too. There are no shortcuts. You have to put in the time. But true to character, Lauderdale is scrambling to pull it together.

Cruise director

As a youngster growing up in Portland, Lauderdale had quick hands and brains -- quick enough to get away with stuff. He fooled around with pieces without polishing them. He wouldn't memorize the music. He didn't practice scales or learn theory. He went his merry way, which is pretty un-classical-like.

But when he wants to, he can nail it. He might wait until the night before, but he comes through.

"I have no idea how he does it," says Sylvia Killman, who is still his piano teacher after 26 years. "This happens over and over. Three weeks to learn Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto? I can do that, he said. And he did."

One of Lauderdale's biggest challenges is focusing on one thing. He loves being around people -- at Harvard they called him the "cruise director" -- and people love him back. Young, old, gay, straight, everybody wants something from him. When he should have been practicing, he and the band were touring Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Spain and Portugal. He did cancel a tour to South Korea and Australia right about now, but just a couple of weeks ago, he was putting in eight-hour days or longer in the studio for the band's fourth recording, due next fall.

Feverish delight

A year ago, Lauderdale -- founder, songwriter and pianist of Portland's widely acclaimed band -- agreed to this mad plan. In moments of high anxiety he'll say he wishes he hadn't.

The folks at the Oregon Symphony gave him a choice of two Gershwin pieces, "Rhapsody in Blue" or Concerto in F. He hesitated. He knew "Rhapsody" would be an easy hit, but something pushed him to the more obscure Concerto. He consulted his therapist, his piano teacher, his friends.

"I hesitated because it's a different kind of preparation," Lauderdale says. "I played it with Norman (Leyden) in 1993 and it went pretty well, but I didn't connect to what the orchestra was doing. And I never really mastered the third movement."

But he said yes this time to push himself. The Concerto in F (1925) is a feverish delight that, in Gershwin's output, comes hard on the heels of "Rhapsody in Blue." While "Rhapsody" set the composer's reputation for all time, the Concerto is just as jazzy, if not quite as spontaneous-sounding. It's still pushy and impish, swaggering and insistent, and Lauderdale knows it fits him perfectly.

If he can get it together.

Why shouldn't he? Every bio blurb mentions Lauderdale's classical background. He infuses Pink Martini with Chopin and Ravel -- even Poulenc, an urbane, obscure French composer -- along with a cerebral brand of Latin, cabaret and retro music. That's one secret of the band's success: its classical side. Lauderdale insists on it, just as he's always insisted on playing a Steinway grand. Well-tuned. Without classical music, Pink Martini would be something else.

But the free-spirited Lauderdale is not your typical classical musician.

"You have to practice every day," says Robert Taylor, who doubles as the trombone player in Pink Martini and as assistant principal trombone in the Oregon Symphony. "You can hear when someone hasn't put in the time. That's what it takes."

Lauderdale never wanted that. "Being locked up in a practice room isn't very fun. I think I flit around a lot. To be generous to myself, it's because I'm so interested in the world. To be crueler, it's because I'm a sloppy bohemian."

Still, he has always embraced his classical side. When he showed up for a piano lesson at Killman's door at the age of 12, he handed her a list of 20 classical pieces he'd learned.

"Which ones do you have memorized?"

"All of them."

Killman doesn't like the word prodigy, "but his whole mind was very different. He was already wired in some way."

Leaving nothing to chance

That was a lifetime ago, and he's still showing up for lessons. But in the final weeks before this concert, Miss Killman, as he still calls her, is just the tiniest bit exasperated.

"Tonight I'm going to yell at him," she says, warning me away from a recent lesson.

When I do show up the next day, they make quite a pair. Miss Killman is 83; Lauderdale is 38. She stands 4-foot-8; he's not much taller. She pulls her silver hair into a tight bun; his stands up in bleached surprise. She sings along in enthusiastic squeaks; he says almost nothing.

"He's out of the prodigy stage," she says bluntly. "He can't get by on being cute any longer. It's no longer adequate. It's not mature."

And yet, when he sits at her Steinway grand, surrounded by floral wallpaper, chintz sofa and a front window looking onto a quiet neighborhood street, he still looks like a kid, white shirt tucked in, eyes focused on his hands.

"OK, I would like a little more honesty in the triplets," she says during a run-through, their faces inches apart. Her voice and manner suggest she is to be obeyed.

"Maybe change the quality of sound here. Start brilliant up here and get kind of moan-y."

Lauderdale tries again, but Killman stops him. "Play musically. You sound too diligent. Be big, romantic, swoony."

Lauderdale plays it again, keeping his eyes on her. She waves her arms to show how she wants the music to move.

"Think Fred Astaire ... it isn't quite playful enough."

"Playful enough?"

"I hear technique, technique, technique, but I don't hear how the darn thing fits together."

Killman, a pianist and serious performer before retiring, leaves nothing to chance. She's a laser in getting to the heart of the music, the composer's intentions, which is why Lauderdale adores her. "She knows more than I do," he says. "She was the best piano teacher for me because she wasn't ambitious for herself. Her only goal was to get me to play as well as I possibly could."

You could say they've been through a lot together, beginning with his early competition wins, impressing judges and other piano teachers who expected him to attend one of the big Eastern conservatories. Instead, she watched him go off to Harvard, accepting his choice of a liberal arts college. They resumed lessons after college, and she let Pink Martini practice in her studio when she had one downtown. In addition to his classical rehearsals and concerts, she attended Pink Martini concerts when the band was starting out and still playing in dives.

"All these people were playing bongos and such. I didn't quite get it."

She loved his playfulness, remembering the day they walked through downtown with Lauderdale dressed in a red devil's costume. "It's not that I'm a prude or anything, but I don't run around with people in red devil suits on the street. That was in his cross-dressing days."

Killman knew he was gay before he did, she says, and he keeps all her letters in a box.

On the eve of his leaving for college in 1988, she wrote a farewell letter: "I do have to thank you for brightening my life twice a week or so for almost six years. Lots of people have been with me much longer, but no one has shown such continuity, energy, interest, cooperation, stamina, endurance, unfailing spirit, stability -- and that's not even counting brains and talent. .. I'll miss you like heck but can hardly wait to find out what happens next -- the main wish being that you find a happy, interesting way to live your life."

Killman hadn't seen the letter since she wrote it two decades ago. She reads it now in silence and when she finishes, she says, "I don't throw the word love around lightly, but I think we love each other."

Ideal outcome

Why is he putting himself through this?

"It helps keeps me from becoming Liberace," Lauderdale says. "I worry that Pink Martini concerts can be more about the show and less about the music."

Do doubts remain?

"I'm scared of falling short of what it should be. I'm not scared of playing in the band anymore. I used to be, then I realized anything can happen and it's fine. We find our way out of it, even starting and stopping. But with this orchestra, you've got world-class musicians."

A week after the lesson I attended, Lauderdale was feeling better about his preparation, he says. "Working with Miss Killman has been the best part of this experience."

Here's his version of the ideal outcome for Saturday: "To be able to play the piece in a way that's meaningful to me and communicates a cohesiveness and joy."

Miss Killman clearly has no doubts. "He will be ready -- somehow."

Thomas Lauderdale with the Oregon Symphony

Program:

Guest conductor Christoph Campestrini conducts Aaron Jay Kernis: "Too Hot Toccata; George Gershwin: Concerto in F (with Lauderdale); Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 3

Where: Schnitzer Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sunday; 8 p.m. Monday

Tickets: 15−15-15−125; 503-228-1353, www.orsymphony.org or Ticketmaster, 503-790-2787

Pre-concert talk: One hour before curtain

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.