Concert Review
Edmonton Jazz Festival (www.edmontonjazz.com)
Pink Martini with Meghan Smith Trio
June 24, 2008 7:30
Winspear Centre 

Wrote By: Xanthe Couture (Edmonton Correspondent - Canada) 

From the minute you walked into the Winspear Centre on a balmy summer night, you knew you were in for a treat. The Edmonton crowd was dressed up in their finery and sipping on none other than delicious pink martinis. 

The opening act followed in the same manner and impressed the crowd right away. The Meghan Smith Trio is an up and coming act made up of Meghan as the lead singer on guitar and omni cord, complemented her husband on guitar, and a pianist and cellist.

It's exciting to know you are watching someone on stage before they are consumed with fame. The unknown quality and the need to prove their abilities to the audience provide an extra element to the show, like meeting someone for the first time and liking them right way. 

Smith began her set with a simple "Good evening," and then proceeded to wow the audience with her powerful voice with the jazz roots of Ella Fitzgerald. 

Her stage presence and banter with the audience had the confidence and comedic skill of Jann Arden. At one point Smith even took a picture of the audience since she had always dreamed of being in front of being such a big crowd and needed proof for herself of her achievement.

Songs about ex-fiancées, being a poor struggling artist and missing a long lost friend from childhood, who happened to be in the audience, made the songs engaging and part of a narrative with the audience.  Smith informed the crowd, all her new best friends, that she had recently been signed to Warner Music, so luckily this won't be the last anyone sees of her. Now the struggle to find her album, which was not being sold in the lobby, begins. 

Pink Martini was everything that their albums gave the impression of being. At times the singer, China Forbes, seemed like too much musical glitz since the talent of the mini-orchestra was more than enough to make for a moving concert.

The opening song, a classical piece, grabbed you by the soul and held you there, the violin, piano, percussion, trumpet and trombone all blending together in perfect time and with equal respect given to their individual instrumental sounds.

The majority of the songs were from 1950s movies from various countries including Japan, China, Egypt and France. Forbes' ability to sing in many languages was quite impressive. 

One violin solo, which was not named by the pianist, who had gave a rundown of all the film track songs, was the most affecting piece in the whole show. Maybe it's the Edmonton vibe that the crowd would prefer to hear some depressing classical tunes, but that is what got the loudest applause from the audience.

Other notable songs included classics like '¿Donde Estas, Yolanda?', 'Encanto' and the encore 'Brazil', which resulted in a woman from the audience, dressed for the occasion, getting scooped up on stage to dance. 

Looking around the crowd many people were dancing, relaxed and having fun. That was perhaps the best part of the whole show, people of every age truly absorbed in the exotic music that was taking them to another place.