Pink Martini
Lead Season Sponsor
Saturday, May 23, 2026, 7:30pm
BOSTON POPS
KEITH LOCKHART conducting
Festival Overture on The Star-Spangled Banner
Buck
Buckaroo Holiday, from Rodeo
Copland
Carousel Waltz
Rodgers
In celebration of the 73rd annual Armenian Night at Pops
Hayr Mer (“Our Father”)
Yekmalian/Gregorian
Ode to Freedom
Hovhaness
SOFYA VARDANYAN, violin
INTERMISSION
Presenting Pink Martini
Thomas M. Lauderdale, bandleader and piano
Storm Large, lead vocals
Jimmie Herrod, guest vocals
Thomas Barber, trumpet
Antonis Andreou, trombone
Phil Baker, upright bass
Dan Balmer, guitar
Nicholas Crosa, violin
Anthony Jones, drums
Miguel Bernal, percussion
Timothy Nishimoto, percussion and vocals
Selections to be announced from the stage
When can I take photos and videos? You are welcome (and encouraged!) to take photos and videos before and after the concert, and at intermission. Symphony Hall makes for a beautiful backdrop! Photos, videos, and audio recordings are strictly prohibited during the performance. At that time, be a great neighbor to your fellow concertgoers, put your phone or camera away, and enjoy the moment!
Guests are expected to drink responsibly. Intoxication will not be tolerated. Intervention with an impaired guest will be handled in a prompt and safe manner, which may include ejection from the premises.
The Boston Pops welcomes Friends of Armenian Culture Society; Harvard Outings & Innings; Dennis and Cynthia Staats
Steve Colby, Sound Designer | Pamela Smith, Lighting Designer
The Boston Pops Orchestra may be heard on Boston Pops Recordings, RCA Victor, Sony Classical, and Philips Records.
Steinway & Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall.
Special thanks to Fidelity Investments, Lead Season Sponsor, and Fairmont Copley Plaza, Official Hotel of the Boston Pops.
New arrangements and works for the Boston Pops are generously supported by the Cecile Higginson Murphy Pops Programming Fund.
Broadcasts of the Boston Pops are heard on 99.5 WCRB.
Programs and artists subject to change.
The BSO’s 2025-26 season is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc.
Board of Trustees | Board of Advisors | Staff and Administration
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Boston Pops
Led by conductor Keith Lockhart, the Boston Pops, known affectionately as “America’s Orchestra,” performs an exciting and eclectic mix of orchestral arrangements from a wide range of traditions including Broadway and the great American songbook, film music, classical, jazz, pop, country, folk, and, of course, holiday classics. The Pops was created in 1885 as the “light classical” summer season venture of the Boston Symphony. The Boston Pops Orchestra reached its current iconic status during the 50-year tenure of the legendary Arthur Fiedler, who was succeeded in 1980 by the equally renowned film composer John Williams. Keith Lockhart took the helm in 1995. It was Fiedler who started the tradition of Pops performances on the Charles River Esplanade, including the annual Fourth of July celebration, brought the Pops to television with Evening at Pops (1970-2004), and initiated Holiday Pops, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2023. Fiedler welcomed to our stages dynamic, world-class guest artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Julia Child, and Bob Hope. That tradition continues today with Keith Lockhart working with such stars as Brian Stokes Mitchell, The B-52s, Chaka Khan, Nick Jonas, and Rhiannon Giddens. With the Pops, Keith has made 81 television shows, led 45 national and 5 overseas tours, led the Pops at several high-profile sporting events including the Super Bowl, and recorded fourteen albums. Through it all the orchestra has remained of the most recorded, familiar, and beloved ensembles in the world today.
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Keith Lockhart
Keith Lockhart is the second longest-tenured conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra since its founding in 1885. He took over as conductor in 1995, following John Williams’s thirteen-year tenure from 1980 to 1993; Mr. Williams succeeded the legendary Arthur Fiedler, who was at the helm of the orchestra for nearly fifty years. Keith Lockhart, who occupies the Julian and Eunice Cohen Boston Pops Conductor chair, has conducted more than 2,100 Boston Pops concerts and annual Boston Pops appearances at Tanglewood, as well as 45 national tours and 5 international tours to Japan and Korea. The annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular conducted by Mr. Lockhart draws a live audience of over half a million to the Charles River Esplanade and millions more who view it on television or live webcast. He has led eight albums on RCA Victor/BMG Classics; recent releases on Boston Pops Recordings include A Boston Pops Christmas–Live from Symphony Hall, The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers, and Lights, Camera… Music! Six Decades of John Williams. The list of nearly 300 guest artists with whom Keith Lockhart has collaborated represents performers from virtually every corner of the entertainment world. Having recently completed an eight- year tenure as principal conductor, he is now chief guest conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London; he is also artistic director of the Brevard Music Center summer institute and festival in North Carolina. Prior to his BBC appointment, he spent eleven years as music director of the Utah Symphony. He has appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major symphonic ensemble in North America and many in Asia and Europe. Before coming to Boston, he was the associate conductor of both the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops orchestras, as well as music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. For more on Keith Lockhart, visit www.bso.org/keith-lockhart or bostonpops.org.
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Pink Martini
“This is rich, hugely approachable music, utterly cosmopolitan yet utterly unpretentious. And it seems to speak to just about everybody … ” –The Washington Post
Now in its 31st year, the unstoppable engine of joy that is Pink Martini continues to bring founder Thomas Lauderdale’s mission of multi-cultural connection and inclusion to concert stages on six continents. Presenting a mélange of catchy old-fashioned pop, global color, foot-tapping big band sound, and Hollywood glamour, Oregon’s most famous “little orchestra” performs music intended to appeal to everyone regardless of age or background.
Wanting an antidote to the lackluster bands playing fundraisers for his favorite causes, Lauderdale had a vision to bring more beautiful and inclusive musical soundtracks to galas for civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, public broadcasting, education, and parks. Drawing inspiration in music from all over the world, and hoping to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike, he founded Pink Martini in 1994. A year later, Lauderdale called China Forbes, his friend from Harvard, and asked her to join the ensemble; she relocated to Portland to become the band’s first full-time lead singer and soon collaborated with Lauderdale on a number of the band’s favorite original songs.
As the band grew beyond its humble beginnings, Lauderdale lovingly welcomed more and more incredible musicians into the band’s family with open arms, creating regular collaborations with a wide variety of gifted singers, including the inimitable Storm Large, NPR’s dashing Ari Shapiro, the soulful Edna Vazquez, America’s Got Talent finalist Jimmie Herrod, and international singing sensation Meow Meow. On record, the band has also worked with iconic talents such as Japanese superstar Saori Yuki, Iranian legend Googoosh, Rufus Wainwright, Michael Feinstein, Georges Moustaki, Jimmie Scott, and many more.
Featuring a dozen musicians, Pink Martini performs songs in over 25 languages around the world. Says Lauderdale, “We’re very much an American band, but we spend a lot of time abroad and therefore have the incredible diplomatic opportunity to represent a broader, more inclusive America… the America which remains the most heterogeneously populated country in the world… composed of people of every country, every language, every religion.” The band made its European debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and its orchestral debut with the Oregon Symphony the following year. Since then, Pink Martini has played with more than 75 orchestras internationally, including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Other appearances include a performance at the official post-Oscars celebration Governors Ball, four sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, the opening party of the remodeled Museum of Modern Art in New York, multiple sellouts and a festival opening at Montreal Jazz Festival, and multiple appearances, including sellouts, at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
On its in-house label Heinz Records, Pink Martini has sold millions of albums worldwide and released over a dozen recordings. Pink Martini released the acclaimed EP Bella ciao in Spring 2025, featuring the anti-fascist title track sung by Storm Large. Early in 2026, the band will unveil its full-length collaborative release with Googoosh, and plans to have a new album out by the end of 2026. During China Forbes’s current sabbatical, the perpetually energetic and evolving band will continue to tour internationally with a number of its favorite singers, sharing its message of global community and joy through its music.
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Jimmie Herrod
Since late 2017 Herrod has been touring with Pink Martini across the US, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Europe. Outside of performing arts centers and jazz clubs, Herrod is regularly featured with major orchestras across the US, and has shared the stage with artists such as Lalah Hathaway, Brian Blade, Vince Mendoza, Renee Fleming, and many more.
With “a voice like a beacon of hope” (Seattle Times), vocalist Jimmie Herrod brings singular power and expressivity to his globe-trotting career as a singer, songwriter, and entertainer on stage and screen. Herrod first came to worldwide prominence as a finalist on the NBC nationally broadcast television show, “America’s Got Talent,” earning the rare “Golden Buzzer” recognition from actress Sofia Vargara and returning the following year on the AGT All-Stars series.
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Sofya Vardanyan
Sofya Vardanyan is a violinist from Yerevan, Armenia, currently based in Vienna, where she is pursuing her Master’s studies at the Music and Arts Private University of the City of Vienna (MUK).
Born into a family of musicians, Sofya began playing the violin at age 7. She studied at Tchaikovsky Specialized Secondary School of Music in Yerevan before continuing her education in Germany at Detmold University of Music with Prof. Maria-Elisabeth Lott. As of 2026, she is studying at MUK in Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Boris Brovtsyn and Prof. Pavel Vernikov.
Sofya has participated in numerous international festivals and academies, including Yerevan International Music Festival, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop (U.S.), Kronberg Academy Masterclasses (Germany), Moritzburg Festival (Germany), Dachstein Dialoge Festival (Austria), Blaricum Music Festival (Netherlands), Budapest Festival Academy (Hungary), Prussia Cove International Musicians Seminar (UK), and Sion Festival (Switzerland), among others.
She has taken part in masterclasses with distinguished musicians such as Kim Kashkashian, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Pinchas Zukerman, Sergey Krylov, Vadim Repin, Daishin Kashimoto, Ani and Ida Kavafians, Diemut Poppen, Levon Chilingirian, and Joseph Rissin and others.
During the 2024-25 season, Sofya was selected to participate in the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées Academy in Cagliari and joined the orchestra’s European tour projects under the baton of Philippe Herreweghe. Performances included appearances at major venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris, Philharmonie Essen, Stuttgart Liederhalle, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and the Yerevan Opera and Ballet Theatre.
In Armenia, she has appeared several times as a soloist with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eduard Topchjan, as well as with the Armenian State Chamber Orchestra and within the chamber series of the Yerevan International Music Festival.
Sofya is actively engaged in chamber music projects across Europe. As a member of the Ilumina Ensemble, under the artistic direction of the American violist Jennifer Stumm, she performed at Sion Music Festival in August 2025 and in Paris for the 50th Anniversary of the International Viola Congress in January 2026.
In 2025, she founded a piano trio and a string quartet, Trio Lusatév and Quartet Àpeiron. Both ensembles were awarded First Prize and a scholarship at the MUK Private University for two consecutive years in the category of Chamber Music Performance.
A dedicated chamber musician, Sofya finds her greatest inspiration in collaboration and in exploring the emotional depth of both classical and contemporary repertoire. Her playing seeks to reveal the inner world of the music, creating a sincere and communicative experience with the audience.
Boston Pops Major Corporate Sponsors, 2025-26 Season
The Boston Pops and Symphony Hall major corporate sponsorships reflect the increasing importance of alliance between business and the arts. The Boston Pops is honored to be associated with the following companies and gratefully acknowledges their partnership. For information regarding BSO, Boston Pops, and/or Tanglewood sponsorship opportunities, contact Joan Jolley, Director of Corporate Partnerships, at (617) 638-9279 or jjolley@bso.org.