** Ute Lemper at the Athenaeum
( 773-935-6860 ) on April 13
One of the first things you will hear when you put But One Day … ( Decca ) , the new album by international chanteuse Ute Lemper, in your CD player is the song 'I Surrender.' What makes this song distinctive is that it is one of a handful of songs written by the singer. After years of interpreting the work of other composers, from Kurt Weill to Tom Waits to Elvis Costello, Lemper generously shares some of her English-language compositions. The album also includes Lemper's dazzling interpretations of songs by Astor Piazzolla, Jacques Brel and, of course, Kurt Weill.
Gregg Shapiro: One of the most notable things about your new CD But One Day … is that you wrote five of the songs. What does it mean to you to be able to record your own work on one of your albums?
Ute Lemper: It was a wonderful thing. I had written words and lyrics for a long time and I had already done the two French albums with my own lyrics. There were fragments of poetry all over the place in my house, collected and gathered mostly on journeys and tours. I sat down at the piano and hit the chords that I wanted to hit and created the universe I wanted to create to sing this poetry into. Suddenly I had a lot of songs. I went with a friend into a studio in downtown Manhattan and we made demos. The demos were fantastic because they were so immediately recorded after I'd create a song. I'd say, 'Let's go, I have a new one.' I played the piano and he played the drums and the bass. Then we got some great musicians to play on it and also to replay my horrible piano playing ( laughs ) . We had almost 20 songs. What you hear on the record is based on the 16-track analog recording made in the studio in downtown Manhattan. We dumped everything into Pro-Tools and made choices, such as creating transparencies and tweaking. Sometimes the drums sound like programming, but they aren't. Everything is played by musicians. We just experimented with different filters and other sounds. Once we made a lot of space, we put a string quartet on or a small orchestra. Suddenly we had these pieces that are between contemporary songs with a groove-y vibe-y element and string arrangements inspired by Satie and Debussy and this intimacy that sounds jazzy. We had what we wanted to haveto bring life to music which was inspired by a century of composers from the classical and non-classical world and bring it into today's time. We were very surprised that it worked.
GS: Do you prefer to keep your songwriting process solitary or are there songwriters with whom you would like to collaborate?
UL: Both. I would say that I will keep writing because it was so much fun. I certainly want to keep collaborating. These experiences that I had with Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and other writers. Laurie Anderson ( violin on the song 'Lena' ) is on the album and it's wonderful to have her. She just jumped into the room and said, 'Let me play something,' and then she improvised over the song, which was great. I definitely want to sing songs from the theatrical repertoire there's still a lot out there that I didn't record yet that I am singing in the concerts. I want to collaborate with contemporary writers as well. It's all brewing, but it's too early to talk about anything now. I want to keep all the dimensions open.
GS: I'm glad that you brought that up, because with the combination of the style and the arrangements of the songs, But One Day … serves as a bridge between the more traditional material that people are familiar with you performing and the experimental approach you took on Punishing Kiss. Do you feel like you are caught between the two worlds?
UL: I don't feel caught at all. That's something which wouldn't co-exist with my life ( laughs ) . I'm a free person and I love following my instincts and impulses and being creative. I don't like being anywhere where I have to follow too many rules ( laughs ) . I find it very inspiring. The traditional world always has a touch of nostalgia to it and I never wanted to see it that way. For me, whether I sang a Jacques Brel or a Kurt Weill, I sang it as if it would be a contemporary song, with the spirit and anarchy and anger and the desperation of a contemporary person. Only in a very specific show would I treat it in a nostalgic performance way. Otherwisego for it, straight from the heart and straight into today's time. I didn't put myself into a historical corner because of that. I don't know what the identity of today's music really is. There are these great dinosaurs that have survived over 25 yearsBruce Springsteen, Sting, Randy Newman, Billy Joel, Santana, but maybe not Joni Mitchell. Maybe she didn't survive. People like that, who can still bring everything to today's world. There is still an audience forpeople who have a necessity and a hunger for music which is coming from a real personality with history and experience.
GS: It's interesting that you should bring up Joni Mitchell, because I don't think people appreciate the history and experience that she brings to the table in her work.
UL: Yes! And how much she inspired other people at the same time. Really high-class music. If you compare what she wrote to some other female artists of today or on the charts or who sell a lot of records, it's ( full of ) highly, wonderfully complicated, multi-layered performances and arrangements. She is a genius!
GS: Since we're talking about other musical styles, you perform two songs by Astor Piazzolla, 'Buenos Aires' and 'Oblivion.' What is most appealing to you about performing his compositions?
UL: I was singing them for a while onstage. I never dared to touch the tango world of Astor Piazzolla because my Spanish is not the Buenos Aires/Argentina tango-specific dialect necessary to master it and sing it in Spanish. I kind of gave up on it for a few years, then I sat down one day and said, 'This is it.' I was with an Argentine friend who said, 'You must sing this.' The next day I was sitting in my apartment and I adapted the songs into English in a way that they hadn't been adapted before. I said, 'This is going to work.' It's very poetic and colorful and deeply passionate. It has a lot to do with the French chanson and the German tradition and it has very powerful words. I sang it onstage and people loved it. The same with ( Jacques ) Brel ( 'Ne me quitte pas' and 'Amsterdam' ) . I was singing it for a while, but had never recorded it. People were asking me, 'Where are the recordings of these songs?' So I was due to finally record these songs.
GS: Are there other musical genres, such as country or electroclash, which you would consider exploring on CD?
UL: ( Regarding ) country, I come from a very different cultural background. It's not what I would be able to do ( laughs ) . I don't have the mentality for that. Jazz, beautiful standards, or new songs. I also love Brazilian music so much. At the moment I am studying very interesting stuff for a show called Nomad that I am doing in Paris in May ( 2003 ) . I'm studying songs out of the oppression and the exile. Deep, beautiful songs about survival in Russian, Hungarian, Yiddish and Arabic. It's a multicultural project which will bring this world of nomads and cultural identity together.
GS: As an actress who performed in the musical Chicago on stage, I was wondering if you had seen the movie version, and if so, what you thought of it.
UL: I didn't see the movie version, but I hope to see it. I'm sure it's fantastic because the medium of film, through editing and spicy cinematography, can make the greatest thing out of something that is not intended to be a movie, because it was a stage show. It's a little weird because I played it for a year in London and a year on Broadway, and after two years I definitely was overdosed. I probably will see it on an airplane.
GS: Perhaps on an airplane bound for Chicago.
UL: Yes ( laughs ) .