Ute Lemper
Information
Portrait of German singer Ute Lemper, currently on tour. Footage of the recital and of the Stockholm tour, alternating with an interview with the singer.
Context
Born the 4th of July 1963 in Munster in Germany, Ute Lemper, after her studies at the Academy of dance in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Dramatic Arts lessons in Vienna, was very quickly noticed while performing the leading roles of great, successful musicals (Cats, in Vienna in 1983 then straightaway Peter Pan in Berlin, Cabaret in Paris in a Jerome Savary production (which earned her a Moliere for the best musical actress in 1986) or even The Blue Angel in Berlin).
She had also led, since 1987, a career as a singer, first devoting several records to the universe of Kurt Weill (Sings Kurt Weill, The Threepenny Opera and The Seven Deadly Sins in 1990) before recording Songbook in 1990 in collaboration with the composer Michael Nyman and in 1992 Illusion, very representative of the eclecticism of her repertoire mixing French songs (Prévert, Piaf), Broadway standards and avant-garde cabaret. In 1996 she published the album Berlin Cabaret Songs, a collection of songs censored by the Nazis. At the turn of the year 2000, she moved to New York and published the ambitious Punishing Kiss that revisited the rock universe of Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and Divine Comedy.
Ever more attracted to composition, Ute Lemper published But One Day in 2002, introducing five of her compositions to pieces by Weill and Eisler and in 2008 Between Yesterday & Tomorrow, the first album by the singer that was completely composed of the original songs.