Ute Lemper is an internationally acclaimed singer, actress, composer, author and visual artist whose career has taken her to the world’s leading concert halls, theatres and festivals for more than four decades.

Over the course of her career, she has recorded more than 30 albums and has been celebrated worldwide for her distinctive interpretations of the Berlin cabaret repertoire, the works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and the chansons of Marlene Dietrich, Édith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré and Jacques Prévert. Her repertoire has also embraced the music of Nino Rota, Astor Piazzolla and Michael Nyman, alongside an extensive body of her own compositions.

Her work in musical theatre and drama has taken her from Berlin and Paris to London’s West End and Broadway. Among her many international honors, she received the Laurence Olivier Award and the American Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Velma Kelly in Chicago in London and on Broadway, as well as the French Molière Award for her performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in Paris. Her recording career has also brought her several Grammy nominations.

As an actress, Lemper has appeared in numerous international films, working with directors including Robert Altman, Peter Greenaway, Woody Allen, Pierre Granier-Deferre and Norman Jewison.

Today she continues to tour internationally with a wide range of theatrical and musical projects. Rendezvous with Marlene grew from an extraordinary three-hour telephone conversation she had with Marlene Dietrich in 1987. Songs for Eternity gives voice to songs written by Jewish composers and prisoners in ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. Other programs explore the revolutionary Tango Nuevo of Astor Piazzolla, the great French chanson tradition, the works of Brecht and Weill, and the music of Berlin cabaret.

Her autobiographical project Time Traveler, inspired by her memoir, traces the evolution of more than four decades of artistic and personal experience—from her early life in Cold War Berlin to New York, which has long been her home. Through original songs, stories and memories, the project reflects on the passage of time, identity, artistic freedom and the continuing search for inner peace.

As a composer and creator, Lemper has developed numerous original works, including The Bukowski Project, The Pablo Neruda Songbook and a world-music song cycle inspired by the writings of Paulo Coelho. Her autobiography is currently being prepared for international editions, extending this personal exploration of memory, history and artistic identity to readers around the world.

Lemper traces the formation of her artistic identity to her years as a young German woman immersed in the West Berlin theatre community of the early 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The international success of her early Kurt Weill recordings transformed what began as an artistic journey into something deeper: an enduring engagement with history, memory and human responsibility.

For Lemper, confronting the crimes and traumas of the past is inseparable from the role of the artist. Through remembrance, grief and continuing dialogue, history can become not only a burden inherited from previous generations, but a responsibility carried consciously into the future. This conviction has remained a powerful thread throughout her work.

Singing in five languages and performing across five continents, Lemper has spent four decades crossing musical, theatrical and cultural boundaries. Throughout her artistic life, she has explored questions of humanity, memory, justice, freedom, love and cultural dialogue.

In 2026, Ute Lemper created MOTHERS, a global musical peace project dedicated to mothers and women across cultures who nurture, protect and inspire future generations. Conceived as a musical call for peace, dignity and the protection of children, the project brings her lifelong artistic concerns into a contemporary global context.

Ute Lemper lives in New York with her family and is the mother of four children.