Ruth Leon recommends… Ute Lemper – All That Jazz
Ruth Leon recommendsUte Lemper – All That Jazz
I’ve got a soft spot for the great German cabaret singer Ute Lemper. She appeared at 54 Below in New York this week and although one of her performances was livestreamed, it was streamed only once, at the time of the live performance. That was 7pm NY time with no repeats so it was, with a start time of midnight everywhere in Europe and beyond, not really practical for the rest of us.
Instead, especially if you are not familiar with La Lemper, here she is with a tongue-in-cheek performance of a Kander and Ebb song from their musical, Chicago, which she has starred in several times in several languages. It was filmed on a New York rooftop.
Back to that soft spot. Lemper is the real thing – a genuine international chanteuse with all the glamour and pizzazz of her spiritual predecessor but with one additional and hugely important asset that Marlene Dietrich didn’t have – a sense of humour. She can interpret a lyric with elegance and wit. She can sing the sexiest songs in the most suggestive manner, just as Marlene did, but she makes sure that you ‘get it’, that you know that she knows that all this exaggerated ‘attitude’ is just for fun.
She is quite wonderful. Holds a small room with ease, and charms a concert hall, too. She exudes charm, sensuality, wit, …
Not normally interested in hearing vocalists using microphones, I became a big fan after hearing (and yes, seeing: that was an extremely important part of the experience) her perform Weil’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Milwaukee Symphony under former music director Andreas Delfs and the vocal ensemble Hudson Shad. It does not appear to be on YouTube, but this is, which I did not attend for some reason:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB96fWJcT_Q
I once heard her present a quite astounding Brecht/Weill evening at the 600-seat Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo’s Bunkamura complex. She was utterly spellbinding and the audience members were enraptured. She was magnificent!