Ute Lemper

London Records' Ute Lemper compilation takes its title from a song she sang in her London appearance in the musical Chicago in 1998; it is followed at the start of the disc by her performance of "Don't Tell Mama," a song from another Kander & Ebb show, Cabaret, that she appeared in 1986, and which she recorded on her debut album for Columbia, Crimes of the Heart, in 1987. The two songs neatly dovetail her work over the 12-year period, not only because they are show tunes by the same songwriters but also because they are both pastiches of interwar music, and Lemper has specialized in actual interwar music in between.

Ute Lemper - City of Strangers (1995) {Decca 444 400-2}
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© 1995 Decca Records | 444 400-2
Vocal / Jazz / Cabaret / Classical / Modern

Although Ute Lemper is best known to her devoted cult following as one of the great cabaret singers of all time, the German-born singer began as a stage actress, and has continued this career in tandem with her cabaret work. 1995's CITY OF STRANGERS combines the two sides of Lemper's musical persona, putting songs by the idiosyncratically brilliant Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim next to chansons by the equally unique French composer Jacques Prevert.

The title Paris Days, Berlin Nights is a little misleading. One might expect French songs about morning-after regrets and German ones about living cynically hedonistically, but this collection goes way beyond that. It includes songs about war, abandonment, the indifference of time to human suffering, and gritty street life, with music by Piazzolla and Polish-Jewish composer Chava Alberstein in addition to the expected Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Jacques Brel.

Ute Lemper - Illusions (1992) {Decca 436 720-2}
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© 1992 Decca | 436 720-2
Vocal / Pop / Art Pop / Baroque Pop / Cabaret

ILLUSIONS is one of Ute Lemper's purest artistic statements. Like the similar UTE LEMPER SINGS KURT WEILL, this album is a tribute, this time to two of her clearest influences, Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf. Though Lemper doesn't actually sound much like either singer (her voice is far more robust than Piaf's, and more expressive than Dietrich's), she finds the emotion at the heart of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," and similarly has Dietrich's cool delivery down, giving a different twist to songs like "Jonny, Wenn Du Gerburtstag Hast."

Kurt Weill - Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel - Ute Lemper (1990) {Decca London 430 168-2}
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© 1990 Decca London | 430 168-2
Classical / Early 20th Century / Vocal Music / Ballet Chanté

Ute Lemper at the late eighties, made a marvelous, dazzling idiomatic and if you may, historical collaboration with John Mauceri at the front of the RIAS BERLIN SINFONIETTA, remarking with major possible fidelity, the anger, hopeless, depravation and existential bitterness of Weimar Republic.