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Publication: All  About Jazz
By: Scott Gudell
Date: April 30, 2025

Germany’s optimistic yet fragile Weimar Republic period was wedged between two brutal wars during the early 20th century. Extending from 1918 to 1933, it was proudly called the Jazz Age and the Golden Twenties and offered an abundance of free-flowing entertainment choices. It was also a time of inflation, chaos and conflict dominated by economic instability and political extremism.

Although German cabaret had its origins at the beginning of the century, its true glory days reigned during those heady years between the wars. A bawdy combination of music, dance, theater and comedy was originally presented in opulent venues but also migrated to seedy grottos and decadent clubs. Flashing from the marquees were the names of producers and composers, including Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Performers such as Lotte Lenya (Weill’s wife) helped personify the characters. Other chanteuses included Marlene Dietrich, Germany’s original queen of seduction, who got her start in clubs and went onto worldwide fame via song and cinema.

The mantra of the masses was grab a bottle of champagne and embrace the morbid humor, cynicism and sarcasm of the day. Although the republic was short lived, the sounds and stories successfully moved from sewers to streets to stages and endures to this day. The last few decades of the 20th century saw Marianne Faithfull, the ‘Brit It’ girl, fall under the spell of Weill and Brecht and an aging Lenya blessing the up-and-coming operatic soprano and actress Teresa Stratas.

Then there was German born Ute Lemper. She flirted with a jazz combo in the very late 1970s and embraced theater and dance in the 1980s and used her long, lean statuesque physique to its utmost advantage. She could be wide-eyed and animated like Fanny Brice or vamp things up like a regal Norma Desmond. There was always a sly nod and wink from Lemper to her audience. She eventually shimmied and sashayed her way through performances in Cats, Cabaret, Chicago and more. People noticed.

Marlene Dietrich befriended Lemper upon hearing about a Dietrich inspired Lemper performance soon followed by her full-length recording debut in the late 1980s. In keeping with the bittersweet lyrics of the 1920s and beyond, she wearily sang “I’m a poor relation,” “I work my fingers to the bone,” and “that’s not living, that’s just frustration” on the very first song of her first album. Two songs later, Lemper cooly mesmerized the listener with the macabre tale of “Mack the Knife” and revealed “there’s a dead man lying on the shore,” that “Jenny Towler was found with a knife in her chest” and concluded with “those in the dark cannot be seen.”

With Dietrich’s blessing of Lemper’s presentations, the torch had passed. Although five of Lemper’s first seven albums focused on Weill, she eventually recorded music affiliated with Edith Piaf plus works by Jacques Brel, Stephen Sondheim and more contemporary artists, such as Tom Waits. Lemper even began writing and recording her own material. Her 2025 release, Pirate Jenny, confirms that the addictive pull of Weill continues.

This disc is a 21st-century interpretation of Weill pieces sans a retro 1920s sound and style. The collection is a celebration of Weill’s birth in 1900 and further confirms his enduring staying power. Although the black-and-white cover photo of Lemper with blood-red lipstick is as alluring as ever, a 2025 Lemper video draws us into a concrete quicksand of a decadent underground. She prowls through the streets as a slightly deranged back-alley Joker, complete with garishly smeared lipstick and a weary cat like swagger and sway. As for the album, it is a collection of only eight pieces (six sung in English plus one each in German and French) with Weill-Brecht collaborations featured on five selections, all from the 1920s.

It may only be eight songs but you will still meet a menagerie of nefarious characters. A decidedly eerie and cautious “Mack the Knife,” opens the show. This hypnotic missive is more a dreary Bladerunner 2049 than a vibrant Berlin 1928 and it sets the tone for the evening. There is a pair of Weill songs from the early war years of the 1940s. “Speak Low” (lyrics by Ogden Nash) drifts on ethereal clouds of sound while “My Ship” (lyrics by Ira Gershwin) floats on understated ribbons of sound. Both are complemented by the brief appearance of a muted trumpet which returns during several other songs as well. Both “Speak Low” and “My Ship” went on to become jazz standards recorded by a seemingly endless A-list of top artists.

Then “Pirate Jenny” takes center stage at the album’s midpoint. Whether pickpocket, prostitute or a tart combination of both, she commands our attention with a cynical growl that is more spoken than sung. The final track, the Weill-Brecht penned “Solomon Song,” is a tortuous tale that maintains the same atmospheric aural drone that dominates the album from start to finish.

If you are in search of new interpretation with subtle twists and turns, welcome to tonight’s cabaret since the liner notes remind the listener this is “Kurt Weill reimagined… ” If you are seeking more traditional versions of these songs, rewind to any number of earlier Lemper releases and cherry-pick a collection of your choice. It ultimately comes down to ‘different’ instead of ‘better or worse.’ There are no garish klieg lights or bombastic orchestra at this venue, just low-key sounds with swirls of smoke lingering—and then dissipating—into thin air.

Track Listing

Mack The Knife; Speak Low; Surabaya Johnny; My Ship; Pirate Jenny; Le Grand Lustucru; Die Ballade Vom Ertrunkenen Madchen; Salomon Song.

Click here for All About Jazz’s review online.

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Publication: LoveLondonLoveCulture.com
By: Emma Clarendon
Date: April 25, 2025

We chatted to Ute about her new album ‘Pirate Jenny’ and revisiting the work of Kurt Weill.


Photo Credit: Jim Rackete
Photo credit Jim Rakete

When did you first experience Kurt Weill’s music? In the eighties I was on a mission to revive the music of Weimar, especially the music of Kurt Weill. I was a young German actress, living in West-Berlin, a divided city, surrounded by the Wall in the middle of the DDR. It was a time when Europe was still in the midst of cold war trauma and Weimar seemed simply a forgotten era that eventually facilitated through its political failures the pathway to Nazi Germany.

I had moved to Berlin in 1984 after studying and performing in Vienna, Austria and I felt that art was a lot more political in West-Berlin than in the rest of the world. The devastating face of history was written all over the walls, and my mind and heartbeat grew angrier and more rebellious. I studied the music of Weill and conceived my first concert dedicated uniquely to the composer. I wanted to tell his story to the people of my generation, and so I did, in jeans and a T-Shirt in little experimental theaters in the dark but feverish West-Berlin. Kurt Weill’s story was exemplary as a revolutionary German Jewish composer during Weimar, then persecuted by the Nazis, thrown out of the country but able to pursue and create more fascinating compositions and collaborations in exile in a new world, of course with enormous sacrifice and pain.

When I started to rerecord with UNIVERSAL/DECCA the complex songbook of Kurt Weill and the Berlin Cabaret Songs, it initiated a wave of revival and the “Dance on the Volcano” of the 20s in Berlin was back in fashion and fascinated a wave of young performers and audiences in its progressivity and exotism. Being the protagonist of all these recordings was a great privilege that came with enormous responsibility. To be a German with an international career was still a complicated affair in those years. I was confronted with stereotypes and a strangely fascinated hostility based on the stigma of the German character and language. I felt sometimes that I had to carry the horrible Nazi history on my shoulders simply by carrying the German passport. The Holocaust inflicted unbearable pain on my soul, and I wished nothing more than to run away from Germany to bring the story of the Jewish composer Kurt Weill with me to fuel a dialogue about the past. This is when the mission became heartfelt and I dedicated many years to travel the world to celebrate his music in recitals or with symphony orchestras, string quartets, or my band to sing the magical creations from Weimar, mostly with Berthold Brecht, as much as the unknown and known song books of the French and American periods.

For more than 40 years, the journey of this simple and brilliant man who died in America of a broken heart has inspired my life.

Now, the world is once again in the chaos of more cold and hot wars. The compositions, especially the ones with Berthold Brecht as the lyricist are written almost 100 years ago now, yet still breathtaking and completely unique. There is nothing like it. Rock, Pop, Cabaret and Classical artists have been inspired by his works since the nineties. The biting words meet the melancholic melody and the harmonic context evokes in a quirky way colors of Jazz, Ragtime, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. There is theater in all the stories and political, satirical commentary about morality and a corrupt society. Exotic characters tell us about their survival, risen from the ashes of racism, disadvantage, and neglect. It all sounds oh so contemporary!)

I love to sing these ballads of the truth even more 40 years later, after living through the mills of life and witnessing that history wanted to be a good teacher but it could not find any students.

This album presents another take on the songs. David Chesky said a couple of years ago to me, you should reinvent Kurt Weill, put a contemporary edge to it and bring it to the younger generations. I said …let’s do it….let’s celebrate his 125th birthday in an unusual way.

What are you most looking forward to about performing these songs at the Cadogan Hall? For the concert I will perform very pure and human a great collection of Kurt Weill Songs, only with Piano. It is impossible to bring the album on stage , unless you have many many musicians. I find it most real and touching to perform these songs just with piano. So the concert will be very different than the album. It is not reinvented , but original. I will dive into the German repertoire, the Three Penny Opera etc, the French Exile of gorgeous and melancholic compositions and the more entertaining American period of show songs . You will hear all my favourite songs from the  Pirate Jenny to the September song.

What do you hope that people will take away from the album?  It shall open up the interest of new generations. The songs are strong and work in a contemporary setting. We invented a polyphonic ,but more minimalist and very groovy arrangement. Play the album through and start all over again.. it is very viby.

You first focused on Weill’s music on a previous album – what made you want to revisit his work? It is his 125th birthday and needs to be marked…I have sung all originals in traditional ways.. now its time for something new.

By Emma Clarendon

Pirate Jenny is available to listen to now. Ute will be performing at the Cadogan Hall on the 13th June.

Read the original online article here.

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Publication: West End Best Friend
By: Jacob Bush
Date: April 21, 2025

In honour of revolutionary composer Kurt Weill’s 125th birthday this year, acclaimed singer and actress Ute Lemper recently announced her new album, Pirate Jenny, which is released on Friday (25 April) via The Audiophile Society. A concert with the repertoire is also coming up on 13 June at Cadogan Hall. We spoke to Ute ahead of her album release.

For people who may not have come across the work of Kurt Weill, who is he and how has he inspired you and your work?

In the eighties, I was on a mission to revive the music of Weimar, especially the music of Kurt Weill. I was a young German actress, living in West-Berlin, a divided city, surrounded by the Wall in the middle of the DDR. It was a time when Europe was still in the midst of cold war trauma and Weimar seemed simply a forgotten era that eventually facilitated through its political failures the pathway to Nazi Germany.

I had moved to Berlin in 1984 after studying and performing in Vienna, Austria and I felt that art was a lot more political in West-Berlin than in the rest of the world. The devastating face of history was written all over the walls, and my mind and heartbeat grew angrier and more rebellious. I studied the music of Weill and conceived my first concert dedicated uniquely to the composer. I wanted to tell his story to the people of my generation, and so I did, in jeans and a T-shirt in little experimental theatres in the dark but feverish West-Berlin. Kurt Weill’s story was exemplary as a revolutionary German Jewish composer during Weimar, then persecuted by the Nazis, thrown out of the country but able to pursue and create more fascinating compositions and collaborations in exile in a new world, of course with enormous sacrifice and pain.

When I started to re-record the complex songbook of Kurt Weill and the Berlin Cabaret Songs with UNIVERSAL/DECCA, it initiated a wave of revival and the ‘Dance on the Volcano’ of the 20s in Berlin was back in fashion and fascinated a wave of young performers and audiences in its progressivity and exotism. Being the protagonist of all these recordings was a great privilege that came with enormous responsibility. To be a German with an international career was still a complicated affair in those years. I was confronted with stereotypes and a strangely fascinated hostility based on the stigma of the German character and language. I felt sometimes that I had to carry the horrible Nazi history on my shoulders simply by carrying the German passport. The Holocaust inflicted unbearable pain on my soul, and I wished nothing more than to run away from Germany to bring the story of the Jewish composer Kurt Weill with me to fuel a dialogue about the past. This is when the mission became heartfelt and I dedicated many years to travel the world to celebrate his music in recitals or with symphony orchestras, string quartets, or my band to sing the magical creations from Weimar, mostly with Berthold Brecht, as much as the unknown and known song books of the French and American periods.

For more than 40 years, the journey of this simple and brilliant man who died in America of a broken heart has inspired my life.

Now, the world is once again in the chaos of more cold and hot wars. The compositions, especially the ones with Berthold Brecht as the lyricist are written almost 100 years ago now, yet still breathtaking and completely unique. There is nothing like it. Rock, Pop, Cabaret and Classical artists have been inspired by his works since the nineties. The biting words meet the melancholic melody and the harmonic context evokes in a quirky way colours of Jazz, Ragtime, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. There is theatre in all the stories and political, satirical commentary about morality and a corrupt society. Exotic characters tell us about their survival, risen from the ashes of racism, disadvantage, and neglect. It all sounds oh so contemporary!

I love to sing these ballads of the truth even more 40 years later, after living through the mills of life and witnessing that history wanted to be a good teacher but it could not find any students.

This album presents another take on the songs. David Chesky said a couple of years ago to me, you should reinvent Kurt Weill, put a contemporary edge to it and bring it to the younger generations. I said …let’s do it….let’s celebrate his 125th birthday in an unusual way.

‘Mack the Knife’ has been romanticised in the US, becoming more of a catchy jazz standard, but I am trying to bring back its original message and tone in this single.

I always stayed truthful to the original. Well, not always, like in 2001, I performed the jazzy big band version at the Royal Albert Hall for the AIDs Gala with Liz Taylor and Michael Jackson. Michael asked fascinated during the intermission, “who wrote that fantastic jazz tune?” And I told him the story that it was written in 1928, once upon a time in Weimar Berlin by two revolutionary artists, Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht, who wanted to change the world. I told him it was a saga of the most outrageous criminal who intended to overthrow the government. Michael looked very concerned but kindly acknowledged the history of the song. Like many others, he thought it had been written for Ella Fitzgerald in the 50s.

A similar episode happened during my first run of Weill shows in 1989 in the Rockefeller Center Rainbow Room. I sang the ‘Alabama Song’ and people yelled, why would I sing a song written by The DOORS?

Another person screamed, oh no it’s the song by that communist Berthold Brecht. I smiled calmly and let the audience fight about the origin of that song and kept singing: oh show us the way to the next little dollar… oh don’t ask why, oh do not ask why….here…. in the Rockefeller Center….

The next day, the Berlin Wall fell. I will never forget my disbelief about the incredible news I heard on the radio in a yellow cab in NY that morning. A week after my run at the Rainbow Room, I was back in Berlin to perform in the Berliner Ensemble Theater in East Berlin. I was the first West German permitted to perform in this now broken and damned high-profile Socialist establishment after the fall of the Wall. After all, it was the old Theater am Schiffbauer Damm where The Threepenny Opera had its opening night in 1928.

Five years earlier, I had witnessed the concerts of the established East German Chanteuse, Gisela May, on that same stage. She had proclaimed the songs rather than sung them with a militant, idealistic undertone and tempo. I always had preferred the way Lotte Lenya sang Weill, with a slow and melancholic interpretation.

Now, it was my turn. The city was just united, everywhere the seams were fresh and fragile and people were in wonder about history taking a fast train, rolling over people’s consciousness in this new world between shock and enthusiasm. After my concert, I sat with the audience until 3am on the old cracked wooden floor of the stage that carried so much history and we talked about Weill and Brecht, and the uncertain but exciting future.

The world rediscovered the works of Weill and Brecht throughout the 90s, but in Germany for a while too much history was attached to these works. People took distance from the complicated cold war status symbol of the East, especially Berthold Brecht, while Weill was continuously celebrated in America for his compositions for Broadway shows and Hollywood movies.

How did you decide on the track list for your latest album? How does it feel to be returning to the London stage with your latest album?

On 13 June, I will perform at Cadogan Hall with only a piano. It is the opposite dimension of the album regarding the arrangement, it will be pure and theatrical. The songs I present are chosen from all three periods of his life; the Weimar time, mainly with Berthold Brecht as the lyricist, the melancholic but striking French period at the beginning of his exile after having fled from Nazi Germany and of course, the beautiful and entertaining songs of the American creations.

Having performed all over the world, how do you find audiences differ in different countries?

As we are talking about MY audiences, they are not that different. My audience is vibe, cosmopolitan, educated about the repertoire I present and speak several languages, and they love music in its pure and creative form. Some Mediterranean audiences prefer thee French repertoire to the American one.

What have been some of your career highlights to date?

I am really very sure about Marlene Dietrich Programm to be one of the strongest. It is based on the three-hour telephone conversation I had with her in 1987. The show involves a dialogue between the old Marlene and the young Ute. Two German ex-pats speak about history, pain and love about entertainment, and Marlene shows her bitter and melancholic still devilish soul to Ute. I channel Marlene at this point and the story becomes a contemporary extension of the ‘Woman of the Future’.

What do you still hope to achieve in your theatrical or musical career?

I always go with the flow, listen to my intuition, inner needs and curiosity. At the moment, I am working with the Pian Bausch Dance Theatre, a revival of a piece I had done 30 years ago and it is a wonderful deja vu but with very different older eyes. My interpretations have changed a lot.

What advice would you give to people who are seeking to build careers in music and theatre simultaneously as you have?

Life comes in chapters. I did not do everything at the same time. Follow your curiosity and instinct, and go with your heart. And never let yourself be corrupted for the market value of or as a product of show business.

For further info on Ute’s new album and upcoming concert, please click here.