By Andrew Gans
07 Nov 2008

Ute Lemper
photo by Fran Janik

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

UTE LEMPER
There is no one quite like Ute Lemper. The German-born singing actress, who starred in the London and Broadway productions of Chicago, invests her work with a striking emotional intensity that is often riveting. The Olivier Award winner plays large concert halls throughout the world performing songs from the Weimar era and the Great American Songbook, and she occasionally rewards her fans by performing in more intimate venues. In fact, Lemper is about to return to Joe's Pub — the cabaret located within the Public Theater — with a new act entitled Pirate Jenny Comes Back, Nov. 14-29. The statuesque chanteuse has also released her latest solo recording, "Between Yesterday and Tomorrow," which is now available on the Chamaleon Productions label. What makes it unique? It's Lemper's first disc boasting songs all penned by the internationally renowned performer. In the liner notes for the CD Lemper writes, "It is a collection of memories, impressions, moments of joy, but also vulnerable moments of doubt and outrage. It moves between clearness and painful confusion, hope and despair about world issues but always wants to stay poetic in its thought and language." I recently had the pleasure of chatting with the intelligent, forthright artist; that interview follows.

Question: Your home base is Manhattan now.
Ute Lemper: Yes, for ten years.

Question: How do you find living in New York, compared to other cities where you've?
Lemper: Well, I grew up in a little city in Germany, in Münster, between Cologne and Hanover. That was definitely too provincial for me and too conservative. There was no freedom of the mind in this very little controlling city where values were dictated. Then I lived in Vienna and studied there, then I moved to Berlin for many years. I was in Paris for many years and moved to London ... then back to Paris. . . . The triangle between West Berlin, London and Paris: I would just cruise there and lived basically three places at the same time. I was working in those three places. In '97 I moved to London, and then in '98, to New York. I have to say, once you experience the unbelievable vibe of the city, there is nothing like it. Just the fact that people are coming from everywhere in the world to become New Yorkers, and it really is possible. Even though I lived for five or six years in Paris, I never became a Parisian in a certain way because things are very uptight in Europe with the national identities and the style and the nationalistic pride of each country. Especially for a German, it was rather difficult to escape all of the...prejudice against the country. I loved it everywhere, but I would say I feel really home in New York. I love the openness. Where I live, the Upper West Side, is a great neighborhood. Lots of kids, lots of schools and a very spirited and inspiring place to be. The diversity is great. My three kids grew up with the diversity and people from everywhere. I love it. It's a whole different thing than the European upbringing I would say.

Question: How old are your kids now?
Lemper: My oldest son is 14, and my daughter is 12, and my little one is 3.

Question: How do you find combining motherhood and your performing career?
Lemper: It always was a balance act. Fifteen years ago when I started with my first kid, it was definitely difficult to combine it. I was still just 30, and my career was just taking off in a way that it became really international. Interesting jobs came in and all of the different genres, from movies to musicals onstage and the record companies. Those were the years when the record companies still did very, very good... especially the classic companies with the crossover projects like I always did with the recording of the Weill music and Piaf. It was a very busy time, and it was hard to say no to the jobs. I actually feel like I missed out a little bit here and there on just being home with them. And then I was abroad in the West End in London and Broadway every night for two years, when my kids were very little, in the musical Chicago. I totally overworked myself, I would say... just trying to do everything good and everything right. I don't even know how I did it. [Laughs.] Now I really have to pick my choices. For example, movies — I still do here and there European movies, but only if it's really interesting to make, with a very short shooting period that I don't have to be gone too long from home. I really pick my choices now. I do symphony orchestra performances, but I try to keep the family a number one priority, and I am very happy and blessed and grateful to be able to do the job I do and find my time writing music, but not really put my family ever in the second place. They are definitely in the first place, and this is what I want. I love them most. Life goes by so quickly. My God, you turn around and 25 or 15 years have gone by. What I really embrace the most — yes, I love to be onstage and make music and be creative and all of that; this is definitely my passion — but my family is everything to me.

Question: Your new CD features songs that you've written. Have you always written?
Lemper: I started, actually, in the year 2000, when I had recorded this album "Punishing Kiss" with the songs of Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Tom Waits...They were written for me by these great artists. It was a very cool project, and suddenly it lifted me into a different generation audience-wise. It was definitely, with the re-recordings of the Weill music and the French chansons and all of that, I was definitely in a very theatrical audience crowd. Suddenly I got the edgy rock crowd into my concerts, plus the older ones. It was a wide variety of audience, and I felt that suddenly I'm in the contemporary music world, and I enjoyed it very much because I always felt [I was] a very contemporary artist. I never [wanted to just re-create] the old nostalgic Weimar Republic [songs]. It wasn't in my interest. It was about making those songs alive today and connecting them to contemporary issues of the political and social world out there, the world of the big cities and anonymity and decadence and all of that. So I was always thinking very contemporary. After this album, the musical genre was different: It was wonderful to sing a Tom Waits song. He's definitely one of the best here in the States to be sung by an actor.

I was always very connected to the words, and there were lots of stories in my head about the cities where I lived, about the places and different cultures, life chapters, philosophical things about life and love. And then I just had to have the courage to sit down at the piano and find the harmonic world for them to live in. It was much easier than I thought. I do play the piano, but I would say not good enough to play onstage and accompany myself. I would rather just bring it out with an open chest and not be covered at the piano. But it was really a very fascinating puzzle of work to put this all together — to put the music to the words, the words back to the music, and back and forth until suddenly this piece of painting of some worth had its organic flow. Then I presented these little songs to my band. We arranged them and had a run here at a jazz club in New York. It was very successful and then we started recording it.

Question: Do you find any difference between singing a song you've written or singing one written by someone else?
Lemper: I find [that] when I sing my own songs I don't have to do the interpretive work the way I would have to do with a Kurt Weill song or a Brecht song. They are characters. Most of these songs are taken out of theatre plays. Specific characters are singing them, and there is more of a theatrical edge to it. My songs are rather poetic. I would say the music, and the sound images really speak for themselves. I just have to lay out the poetry and let the music take its course and paint its own picture. I would say it's a more subtle work.

Question: Your upcoming show at Joe's Pub is called Pirate Jenny Comes Back. Can you tell me…
Lemper: That's how it's called? [Laughs.] That's how they advertised it? That means I should definitely sing the "Pirate Jenny" song! I didn't know that they chose that title. [Laughs.]

Question: What songs can people expect to hear?
Lemper: Joe's Pub is kind of my home base. I've been there for so many years, and I'm like a regular there every year, and sometimes they just pick the names of the shows, like this one! [Laughs.] I don't even know yet what I'm going to do. There is such a vast variety of repertoire which I can pick from. This is the place, the Public Theater, which brought Brecht over for the first time in the fifties. There is definitely a good amount of Brecht and Weill songs, Threepenny Opera and definitely "Pirate Jenny" will be part of it, as I've decided now. [Laughs.] But there will be French chanson, Brel, Piaf . . . and there will be a whole bunch of my own songs. I've decided, because I haven't sung them for a long time, I want to include the Tom Waits songs, too, this time.  Continued...

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