Oh! Ute give us Weill!
Off-season at The Montreal International Jazz Festival
Dressed like a 1930s femme fatale in a semitransparent beaded sheath, German-born cabaret singer Ute Lemper brought her four-piece band to Montreal’s Place des Arts last Sunday. The statuesque singer-dancer regaled the audience for two hours with songs in French, English, German, Yiddish and Polish.
The 40-year-old Lemper, famous for her Kurt Weill recordings and her lead role in the Broadway musical Chicago, is a modern day Dietrich: more than music, her show has a theatrical quality, incorporating monologues, poetry, stories, and banter with the audience. With her aggressive stage presence, she stalks the audience, plucking victims whom she'll refer to throughout the show in her songs: "Oh Benoit, you know about sex-appeal don’t you ...(sings) 'I want to be pure sex-appeal not just en face but en profil.' "
Singing songs by Astor Piazzolla, Jacques Brel and Joni Mitchell, Lemper gave us just enough Weill to keep us investing in her CDs, although not enough for the Weill-o-philes I overheard complaining at intermission. Promoting her new album but one day. . . , which contains songs from the above composers and Lemper’s original pop songs, Lemper dressed in red velvet for the finale, bringing the audience to its feet with such Brecht-Weill classics as Mac the Knife and Bilbao Song. She thoroughly succeeded in entertaining us for over two hours.
I discovered Lemper quite by accident at the Westmount Library while looking for recordings with different interpretations of Weill’s music. Lemper’s Berlin album with its detailed liner notes kicked off my obsession with German cabaret of the 1930s. Her recording Berlin Cabaret Songs (English version) brought a new audience to this historical music outside her native Germany.
This uber-diva, mother of two, has made New York City her home since 1998. Born in Muenster, Germany to a banker father and opera singer mother, Lemper (luckily for her public) was well spoiled, given lessons in music drama and art by her doting parents. Her successful career on stage, in films, in concerts and recordings proves her parents didn’t waste their time. Lemper’s debut was in the original Vienna production of Cats and she went on to receive awards for her performances as the lead in the Paris production of Cabaret and the London and New York productions of Chicago.
Before the concert I had the opportunity to meet with Ms. Lemper in the Place des Arts dressing room. Dressed casually in her trademark leather pants and looking a bit weary from the demands of touring, she answered questions about her latest show and continuing interest in cabaret.
Mary Ann: How do you train and prepare for your show?
Ute: Every night when the kids are in bed, I take a half an hour and exercise: stomach, back, stretching. That’s all I do except I run around all day with the children, plus my job, plus I love to play tennis after all these damn years I spent at the [ballet] bar making myself crazy, while you can have enormous fun with tennis outside…besides this, I vocalize every day and with rehearsals. I’m so busy all the time that I’m in the whole mood of training my instrument.
Mary Ann: Do you play piano?
Ute: Oh yes I play, I write a little piano music since I was a kid—I hated it then, [laughs] but thank God I did it. My children learn piano, too. I want them to have a great base in music.
Mary Ann: How do you research your material?
Ute: It’s all connected to certain records …since I’m with Universal for 16 years now they have musicologists who really know what they’re talking about. The biggest research was for the Berlin cabaret songs because they were not recorded and only published in very weird places. I listen, read through many books of poetry...Jacques Prevert. It depends on the project. Piazzolla, I have an Argentinean friend who introduced me to the great songs—some of it would only work in Spanish and I’m not good enough in the language, so I chose two or three songs that were my favorites and translated them into English.
Mary Ann: How much do you improvise in your show?
Ute: The journey is very clear. I have to be very clear with my thought and where I want to go. I need to take the audience with me into all the different cultures, cities, places, and stories. And then there are musical moments and also text where I speak and I have no fixed dialogue … it’s all kind of free.
Mary Ann: How do you see genre of cabaret evolving?
Ute: The genre of cabaret does not exist anymore…but cabaret in the American sense is anecdotal and an ego show about the performers. I don’t really know what [true cabaret] it is and I don’t consider myself a cabaret artist. I am a singer inspired by great music and my mission is to tell great stories about society, different cultures, and humanity. I’m not a political speaker even thought the songs are sometimes controversial.
Mary Ann: What inspires your work?
Ute: My inspiration is great music and poetry, from turn of the century [music], Jeanne Moreau, Edith Piaf, Tracy Chapman, Björk…
Mary Ann: What do you do for fun?
Ute: I live. I read the paper, go to films. I rarely go to see Broadway shows or plays. I cook. I have friends in. I go to Brazilian clubs in Manhattan like S.O.B. and the Zink bar.
Mary Ann: Will you keep working with the musicians in this show?
Ute: We have a very good group now, that’s important when you’re touring. They are not on my recordings, so hopefully they’ll be on the next.
Mary Ann: What are your next projects?
Ute: I will be going to San Francisco working with Michael Tilson-Tomas and then a British string quartet. [Simultaneously] I’m working with a completely different group of musicians in Paris on a project called Nomad.
Mary Ann: Is there someone you would like to work with in the future?
Ute: Eric Clapton, Sting, and again with Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Tom Waits. There are so many. I meet them at interview shows and it’s all brewing. Who knows?
Ute Lemper finished up the off-season schedule of The Montreal International Jazz Festival—with the summer edition blowout just around the corner. Check back with Montreal.com this weekend for the complete rundown and lowdown on the 24th edition of the fest, held this year from June 26 to July 6.
The New Jazz Society
Punk, poetry, and politics
Eclectic electric
Remembering Roy Kral
You don't have to be Irish...