Publication: Vents Magazine
Date: May 15, 2023

VENTS Magazine recently had the pleasure of interviewing German musical legend Ute Lemper about her new music video, “Time Traveler.” The interview can be read below!

Your music video has incredibly detailed graphics that take viewers on a journey through time. What inspired the story behind this music video?

The idea was to be a time traveler, through a hundred years of history from the past into the future. I am experiencing time running too fast or sometimes stalling in my own life, wondering about our planet’s evolution and the years marking our faces.

Important human beings appear to accelerate progress and contribute to culture and humanity, others destroy it all over again. Is it a cycle of history, simply the human condition? The video is a fun movie, that takes us on a visual adventure enhanced by AI, a journey through time and into our mind. The song is sensual and offers philosophical ideas.

How has your German heritage influenced your sound?

In this kind of repertoire of soul music with a contemporary edge and my own songs I do not see any specific influence from my German background. It is not theatrical music or chanson; this one is straight from the heart and simply vibey. The storytelling, though, might always have a certain edge and depth due to my heritage. I always search deeper and try to poeticize the mysteries of life.

Has your history in musical theater impacted your music career today? If so, how?

I spent years on stage in shows and theatrical plays, but always was the happiest when I could dedicate my time to my own creations, when I do not have to fit into anything but can be utterly free in my creation. A sparkle of an idea often starts off an entire project and it’s wonderful to go all the way, without any compromises.

How has the theme of change demonstrated in “Time Traveler” affected your own journey in the music industry?

Ha, I definitely have seen the evolution from vinyl in the 80s to CDs in the 90s, to digital distributions over the last 10 years. The change in musical production from tape to Pro Tools and the worrisome disappearance of the human performance in its imperfection in the contemporary pop music. Where will this lead? Will my children still have an ear for raw and authentic performances? I do not mind the minimalist approach of many contemporary pop productions, but I do mind the absence of humans giving their soul into the music.

How does “Time Traveler” differ from music that you have released previously?

The album carries only my own songs in lyrics and music. I had composed many of the previous albums but mainly to poetic literature, like Bukowski, Neruda and Coelho. These songs have my own words. It is not really jazz or cabaret, chanson or lied; they have their own language in a soulful universe.

What is next for you and your career?

I just wrote a substantial autobiography, now published in German and soon to be licensed in other languages. I am thinking of conceiving a show with stories about my life from cold war Berlin to Paris in the poetry clubs and New York in many transitions since 9/11, all accompanied by the essential songs expressing those moments in time.

What can you tell us about your upcoming album?

In the year 2000 I had just found new love with my partner Todd and started a new passage in life after a divorce and a few years in shows in the West End and on Broadway. I was touring with my album Punishing Kiss and was highly inspired to start writing songs myself. I was filled with ideas, lyrics, poetry, and harmonies on my piano. Todd and I recorded the songs on a 16 track analog tape machine in his music studio in Chelsea. Two years later we had switched to a Pro Tools set up and the old tapes disappeared for more than 20 years in the basement… until we discovered them again by coincidence. Now a lifetime later, still together making and producing music, we had the old tapes carefully digitised and could not believe the originality of the old  songs. By touching them up, partly re-singing, partly keeping the youthful voice, blending old and new stories, laying a more contemporary sounding groove under it, I suddenly found the inspiration to write music again.

The album shows a time warp, a wrinkle in time and a beautiful encounter with our younger selves, but at the end the new songs dominate as they express my more mature contemporary philosophy of life.

What is your favorite lyric from “Time Traveler”, and why?

In these dark times, the eyes start to see….
If you move the wall sideways it becomes a bridge
Was there ever innocence, I am fine with its loss
I am a time traveler looking for you, here to save you

What have you learned from your time as a musician that has helped you with your upcoming album?

Follow the instinct, make space for the words inside the music and the silence within.
Invite incredible talent to contribute and shine.
Make the music embrace humanity in its beauty.
It is a teamwork, but stay faithful and truthful to your vision.


Follow Ute Lemper:

https://www.facebook.com/UteLemperOfficialPage
http://instagram.com/utelemper
http://twitter.com/UteLempersMusic

Click here to read the article on Vents Magazine website.

Publication: OurQuadcities.com / EINPresswire.com/
By: Andrew Gesner
Date: May 15, 2023

Ute Lemper has cut revelatory versions of songs by many popular artists. “TIME TRAVELER” makes clear that it isn’t only the world that’s changing: we are, too.

In his science fiction classic The Time Machine, H.G. Wells describes the exhilarating (and terrifying) experience of watching the years flutter by like the pages of a flipbook. Moments significant and mundane blur together into a single story of perpetual change. “TIME TRAVELER,” the new video from German musical legend Ute Lemper, brings this vision to life in dazzling color and subtle but resonant strokes. While the singer tells her story from the picture window of her ship on the seas of time, the clock accelerates. Battlefields become temples, the wilderness is tamed and grows wild again, ordinary men morph into historical figures, and the earth itself seems to shiver under the weight of history.

It’s dramatic and fascinating to watch but also a metaphor for Lemper’s award-winning career. Through music, the vocalist has always bridged the distance between past and present – and she’s kept a keen eye on the future, too. Lemper has earned a reputation as one of the most formidable interpretive singers in the world, cutting revelatory versions of songs by Kurt Weill and Brecht, The Berlin Cabaret, Tom Waits, Philip Glass and Nick Cave, and many others. Her reanimation of the work of Edith Piaf revealed the cornerstone French singer to be an artist grounded in tradition but perpetually relevant. Lemper’s imaginative performances in musical theater — The Blue Angel, Peter Pan, Cabaret, and Chicago, to name a few of the shows she’s starred in — have established her as a cornerstone of the European stage and Broadway.

“TIME TRAVELER,” too, feels simultaneously contemporary, anticipatory, and rooted in the classics. This is a sophisticated jazz-pop sung written by the artist herself, an impeccable vocalist — but it’s also playful, and its starry-eyed lyrical hook will resonate with romantics of all kinds. And as the clip for “TIME TRAVELER” makes clear, it isn’t only the world around us that’s changing: we’re changing, too. The video shows us a version of Ute Lemper unshackled by time. Sometimes we’re shown the youthful Lemper who scaled the walls of contemporary theater with her dazzling talent, sometimes we get the current masterful Lemper, and sometimes we see the artist in transition, growing into her next challenge. The continuity is visible, and the message is clear. Time can’t lay a glove on her. No matter where she’s been or who she’s portrayed, she’s always been her brilliant self.

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Andrew Gesner
HIP Video Promo
+1 732-613-1779
email us here

See original article online here.

Excuse Us, Ms. Lemper… Your Weimar Is Showing

Publication: Broadway World Cabaret
by: Bobby Patrick
Date: Mar. 29, 2023

Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick
Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick

Heigh-Ho, My Merry Rainbow Tribe! Bobby Patrick your RAINBOW Reviewer here. Grabbing that silent T in cabareT to bring you all the Tea!

Last Saturday’s 7 PM show at 54 Below finally had your favorite cabaret reviewer in the same room with the legendary Lemper… Ute Lemper brought her LILI MARLEEN – FROM WEIMAR TO THERESIENSTADT to where it truly belongs – Under the street. The culture of Weimar that grew in Germany between 1918 & 1933 was truly an underground revolution that was key to how and why the ’20s roared in that part of Europe. All good things must come to an end, especially when Nazis crash the party, and the all-too-short decade and a half that was the halcyon days of that era of freedom gave way to the ultimate oppressors. These days we have a few creative souls dedicated to keeping Weimar alive in small pockets of performing venues in NYC and a few other large cities. Young Kim David Smith and even younger Artemisia LeFay are shining examples of Gen Z’ers who embrace, rather than ignore or even repudiate, our creative pasts. The expressionism of Weimar also lives on in Ute Lemper, whose Kabarett performance Saturday night was painted in the stark shades of bright white, sharply punctuated with shafts of black throughout. Her Haunting opening mashup of Philip Glass’s STREETS OF BERLIN with Weill & Brecht’s ALABAMA SONG & BILBAO SONG perfectly evoked the Weimar dames like Marlene Dietrich and Lotte Lenya. Oh, those growled R’s and her eyes that see only what she needs to see, all the while mining diamonds and hot coals from her voice box, an instrument that yields a belting mezzo with a solid alto crossover. The audience is essential to her, as is the drama of a ’20s that really roared.

Recalling the dark times of then and now, Lemper’s voice is a wail for society, with A-tonal disturbances that cry out for free speech and expression, then, suddenly, some major chords and “pretty” intervals are dropped in, quite unexpectedly. Ute goes from pretty to thrilling and back again, as she tells stories that walk through the days before and during WWII. Telling the gut-wrenching story of Ilsa Weber, and then giving an equally moving rendition of the lady’s song about the concentration camp THERESIENSTADT (the camp for artists and musicians, before being sent to Auschwitz) left all open-mouthed with a mixture of loss and admiration for Weber and her words. With perfect support from Vana Gierig on piano, and Cyrus Beroukhim on violin, Ute was able to ride their waves of music, which were always filling but never overfilling the space, allowing their star to dominate. One comes to an understanding, at Lemper’s hands, that the realities of German society before… you know who… was that of a culture in flux from what it had been, under a harsh nobility, through a time of unprecedented freedom of expression and speech. It was a joyous time… until it wasn’t, and what the Lady Lemper creates with her show is THEATRE, my lambs.

Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick
Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick

Another highlight of Lemper’s show was her title song LILI MARLEEN, a tune Herman Göring called “Kitsch with the smell of corpses.” In her talkie bits around the number, Ute told of how the song became Marlene Detrich’s theme and that she went on to sing it in public and on several albums. In 1939, Marlene became a devoted American citizen with such a distaste for Adolf that she even entertained thoughts of getting close enough to him to kill him during an invited visit to Germany, a plan she later thought better of. Marlene’s patriotism for her adopted country meant she was barred from Germany’s shores for years. Brilliantly recreating the moment of Dietrich’s triumphant return for a UNICEF GALA in the ’60s La Lemper touched every heart in the house with Pete Seger’s WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE as her finale for the night and, despite the rousing standing ovation and calls for MORE, there was no encore, leaving us all wanting that more.

Embracing, as she does, the stark expressionism of Weimar and the darker stories of Jewish oppression, Lemper’s show is one of the most uplifting pieces of theatre we have seen in a while. Her performance of each song and of her spontaneously spoken script took the room back, gave us a modern perspective on songs that were never silenced, no matter the highs and lows of life, and rang out with the catchphrase of the Kabarett In Exile formed briefly by Brecht and Eisler, “We’re Not afraid to be queer and different.”

In the end, through her sense of drama and the music of Holleander, Spoliansky, Brecht, and, yes, even Seger, Ute Lember built a smokey, dimly lit, and incredibly exciting Kabarett room under 54th Street. She let light shine in controlled measures and painted in the shadows as she sang, and, for all of that, we give LILI MARLEEN – FROM WEIMAR TO THERESIENSTADT At 54 Below a resounding…5 Out Of 5 Rainbows

Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick
Ute Lemper at 54Below in NYC, photo by Bobby Patrick

We Could Only Wish That The Lady Had More NYC Performances Scheduled This Month, But Do Keep Up With Her Calendar: HERE

Read, My Boss, Stephen Mosher’s Review Of The Lady’s RENDEZVOUS WITH MARLENE: HERE

All Photos By Yours Truly, Bobby Patrick

Click HERE to read see review along with more fabulous photos from the performance by Bobby, on the Broadway World site.

 

I am so excited to present my new single ‘TIME TRAVELER’ with a cutting edge and mind blowing video!
Click on the image above to see the video on YouTube. ‘Time Traveler’ is the new single from my upcoming album of the same name.

Credits :
Music and lyrics by: Ute Lemper
Video by: WEAREM2

You can also listen to ‘Time Traveler’, a bridge between past and present, and other music by Ute, at any of the links below:
Spotify: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnSpotify
Deezer: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnDeezer
Apple Music: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnAppleMusic
Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnAmazonMusic
YouTube Music:    / ute lemper – topic  

A never before seen image of Lemper from her soon-to-be-released album – Photo: Guido Harari

Publication: Town and Country Magazine
BY: DANIEL CAPPELLO
Date: FEB 10, 2023

With a new book and album—both titled “Time Traveler”—the chanteuse is showing no signs of slowing down.

“This is a very big year for me,” Ute Lemper, sitting among keyboards, drums, and violin and cello cases in her Upper West Side penthouse music studio, lets slip with a sly smile, “I have a big birthday—a big round one.” Don’t let Lemper fool you: the German chanteuse, famous for her powerhouse vocals and dramatic stage presence, is proof that age, especially 60, is just a number. With an autobiography and new album set to be released later this year—both titled “Time Traveler”—Lemper shows no signs of slowing down. She just wrapped a run of weekend performances at the Neue Galerie’s Café Sabarsky, here in New York, and is in final rehearsals for tonight’s one-night-only show at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C. Pegged to the Valentine’s Day weekend, it’s being billed as a “Songs from the Broken Heart” program.

Though somewhat more casual than the sleek, sculptural persona who glides onto the stage with femme-fatale platinum curls in a silky, plunging black gown, she exudes a sort of incandescent aura that radiates even in rehearsal. As she practices her stage saunter (“I’ll walk slowly…slowly…slowly,” she tells the band, coordinating with cellist Matthew Parrish for when to chime in, “then I make a schwoop—a thing with my head”) and plays with pianissimos within the arrangements, she struts across the tiled floor in a fitted cardigan and pair of rumply black Lululemon pants, which, on her, look more Issey Miyake.

As the sun sets on a cold winter’s day, the midtown Manhattan skyline comes into sharp relief from the unfettered terrace views outside; the glow of illuminated buildings calls to mind the stage lights as she and her band polish the details. “I don’t think we should have the bass at the start,” she says while launching into Charles Trenet’s “Que reste-t-il de nos amours?” “Maybe fewer notes? I feel as if it’s a bit out of time.” Then follow other finesses: “Only the right symbol first on ‘de mon passé,’” she tells Todd Turkisher (her husband), on drums. “It kind of sneaks in,” she instructs. Gliding down the note on “le temps” in Leo Ferre’s “Avec Le Temps,” she turns to violinist Cyrus Beroukhim: “Didn’t you want to play this one an octave lower?” Her longstanding pianist, Vana Gierig, is so accustomed to working with her that he can pace himself by even the slightest movements of her back and breath.

Lemper, who catapulted to world fame in the ’80s with the release of a two-volume series of Kurt Weill recordings, was almost instantaneously anointed the Queen of Cabaret, just a young woman in her early 20s. Her tall, slender frame—then as now—belied a colossal voice with almost inconceivable resonance and control. She played Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of Cabaret, earning a Molière, before going on to interpret the role of Velma Kelly in London’s West End production of Chicago, earning an Olivier. Her vampy Velma replaced Bebe Neuwirth’s on Broadway, and she took home a New York Theater Award. In her over thirty-year solo career, she has cornered the market on the works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, which is to say nothing of her scintillating takes on Édith Piaf and Jacques Brel. She moves between languages and traverses decades with uncanny ease and unnerving acumen. She can lure you in with a husky, hushed whisper or knock you to the ground when reaching into her upper registers. Her belting power, on full display a few weeks ago in the quiet, wood-paneled walls of the Sabarsky setting, felt as if it might blow the windows out of the Beaux-Arts building’s ground floor.

Lemper was invited to the Kennedy Center as part of Renée Fleming’s VOICES series, a program Fleming curates as artistic advisor-at-large to showcase the diversity and versatility of the human voice. For Fleming, Lemper embodies the essence of cabaret tradition and style. “In her performances,” Fleming tells Town & Country, “she can create the whole milieu of a Weimar cabaret or a Parisian nightclub with a look, a gesture, or a vocal inflection.” According to Fleming, Lemper deploys an instrument of unlimited expressive range: “Ute can switch from the most silken, seductive purr to a growl, or a cry of anguish, within a single bar of music—all of it evocative and vocally assured.”

That vocal confidence comes from within. She grew up in Cold War Germany, “which certainly did traumatize all of us in my generation—to be there at the seam between east and west in this country that was basically occupied by four forces.” It was like living on a mine that could go off at any minute. In the ’80s, as the political climate marched closer and closer to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall, Lemper was in her formative years, watching from the city’s west as artists on the east were trying to make sense of an unstable world.

As she was recording her now landmark Weill volumes, it was a front-row seat to history and a firsthand lesson in the power of art. Those recordings almost single-handedly revived the existence of 1920s’ cabaret with a K, or “kabarett,” in the traditional Weimar way—not our somewhat saccharine and lighthearted American-style cabaret, but the avant-garde version with “a bite to it,” as she puts it, often political in nature and dedicated to freedom of expression and sexuality. As the Nazis suppressed any form of political criticism, Berlin cabaret, and its many Jewish composers, had to flee into exile. “I was very grateful and privileged to be the protagonist of this revival only because I was chosen to do this,” she reflects. “I took this very to my heart, very seriously, to be the ambassador of this repertoire because along with it came this incredible responsibility as a young postwar German.” To this day, Lemper is a scholarly performer who reaches into history, never letting us forget it. Every year at the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she performs multiple concerts of her “Songs For Eternity” program, which focuses uniquely on the works created between 1942 and 1944 by Jewish prisoners in the ghettos and concentration camps.

As she readies for tonight’s broken-hearts show in the Eisenhower Theater, Lemper is prepared to ramp it up with Harold Arlen’s “One for My Baby” or tug at the heart strings with some of the French classics, but she’s interested in more than just that. “History is not exactly repeating itself, but there are aspects that make you really think, don’t we ever learn? Why don’t we ever learn? How could there be a hot war, a ground war, in the Ukraine?” she asks, the passion rising in her voice. Metaphorically—and more importantly— tonight she will be singing for a broken world. “I feel, in this moment in time, that I really would like to bring a bit more of the political, the difficult, the edgy stuff—not just a song about being sad and sitting at the bar and having a whisky,” she says. “Songs from the broken heart, yes, but from the broken world—from the broken society, the broken confidence, the broken truth.”

Like her forthcoming autobiography, the show will be a sort of time-traveling retrospective of her life, including a share of her Weimar and Yiddish material as well as a section devoted to kindred spirit Marlene Dietrich, who fled Germany to support the American war effort. “This woman is such a woman of the future—she was 100 years ago as she is today,” Lemper beams. As part of her tribute to Dietrich, we’re in for a rare treat with her take on both Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, whom Dietrich happened to love herself. “You know, when I was younger, I liked the big stuff, but now I really like the little moments where the humanity shines through and you can take people on an emotional journey,” Lemper muses in a hushed, reflective tone. You can almost hear a haunting preview of her interpretation of that Seeger song: “Oh, when will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn?”

Read the article online on Town and Country here.