Time Traveler is the title of the indefatigable Ute Lemper’s present brief UK tour and likewise that of the brand new album of songs she herself has written. Lemper is generally labelled a chanteuse, however she has at all times been multifaceted: singer, actor, dancer – for whom Maurice Béjart choreographed a ballet – an exhibited painter in her native Germany, cabaret artist, and now composer, too.
Seemingly prompted by a “large birthday” – her sixtieth – final yr, a interval of musing on life, loves, hopes and glories, was set in prepare. Songs emerged naturally, mirrored significantly within the title music Time Traveler and likewise On the Reservoir, a favorite place in New York, lengthy since her house. But Lemper additionally pointedly invoked Germany’s historical past; a potent second got here when itemizing the iniquities of 1924 Weimar – with whose music Lemper is especially related – and the suggestion that, a century on, issues are literally nonetheless the identical. Reaching the ultimate line of Pete Seeger’s The place Have All of the Flowers Gone? there was actual anguish: When will they ever study? Lemper whispers: “By no means!”
Singing in several languages – English phrases typically an indecipherable drawl, the German carrying the frisson of authenticity – Lemper delivered her best-known numbers – the Weill/Brecht Surabaya-Johnny and Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose – together with her attribute mixture of smooth slinkiness of voice, velvety within the decrease vary. With self-deprecation somewhat than self pity, she wittily made All That Jazz and the whiplash issue of Velma Kelly’s dancing in Chicago (whom she performed in each London and New York) the lengthy legacy of again issues, and displayed one other extraordinary aspect of her artistry, voicing the sound of a muted trumpet.
In between the songs was intimate, breathy and confessional soliloquising. The story of how Marlene Dietrich, on studying that Lemper was being labelled “la nouvelle Marlene”, phoned the then 24-year-old to speak, was mesmerising.
Lemper’s implicit theatricality was matched by chemistry together with her musicians – sensible pianist Vana Gierig and bassist Giuseppe Bassi. She might channel the likes of Dietrich and Piaf, with a powerful sense of Jean Ross (on whom Christopher Isherwood based mostly Sally Bowles), however Lemper remains to be very a lot her personal girl.
