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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 he was 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 honours 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 charts-ranking 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 Pilgrim's, 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 a 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.
Image Credit: Thomas Lauderdale, photo by Alexia Arrizabalaga.
