Press Release: Ute’s New Album “Time Traveler” released through Jazzhaus Records on 26 May, 2023!

Label Manager: Thorsten Ilg
+49 761 79197815
ilg@jazzhausrecords.com 

Life is a song and it wants to be sung. Ute Lemper, the New York-based German singer and dancer, is renowned for her interpretations of Brecht Weill songs; she slipped into the skin of Marlene Dietrich and has made a name for herself worldwide as a musical performer and specialist for the repertoire of the 1920s. The richer the versatile artist’s palette became, the more she became longingly aware of what else was slumbering inside of her, waiting to be shared with the world. More than anything else, the need to sing about her innermost self was becoming increasingly more urgent. “Time Traveler” is not the first album on which Ute Lemper sings her own material and yet, since the story of this collection of songs already began 23 years ago, it is a turning point in her self-perception. In many ways, the year 2000 was a new beginning for Ute Lemper, a year in which she freed herself from the cocoon of her historical repertoire and found herself in her songs. The album “Punishing Kiss” from that year still consisted of songs that other artists had specifically tailored to her. “I thought to myself, there’s no reason at all why I can’t sit down at the piano and write myself” she says, recapping that turning point. While working on “Punishing Kiss,” she met her future husband Todd Turkisher, who had his own studio in New York’s Chelsea district. There, Ute Lemper’s first self-composed songs were created and recorded on an analog tape machine. For various reasons, however, these songs were not released at the time. They disappeared into the basement, gathering dust for the time being. The album “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow”, with original compositions by Ute was eventually released in 2008. However, these were not the songs written eight years earlier. Subsequently, she set texts by Charles Bukowski, Pablo Neruda and Paulo Coelho to music for three very different albums and other projects followed.

By mere chance, the boxes of tapes that had disappeared two decades earlier reappeared in her in-laws’ basement in 2021. But the original tape machine no longer existed and the songs could not be played back. As luck would have it, a cassette with a backup copy turned up and, upon hearing these songs again, Ute and Todd embarked on their journey back through time. Thrilled, they arranged for the original tapes to be digitized. “We listened to the songs and agreed that it was worth trying to revive them,” the singer recounts today with euphoria, as if she had discovered this hidden treasure only yesterday. “However, this wasn’t possible with all of the songs, some of which were just too antiquated. But others still had a contemporary pulse that interested me. We did tweak some of these songs in terms of production but even then, it was clear to me that we couldn’t make an album from these old pieces alone. Then one morning I felt the impulse to write new songs again, there was a spark of intuition, additionally inspired by age. The first song that came was ‘Time Traveler,’ because, for me, going back and unfolding this 23-year-old crease in time really is time travel.”

Ute Lemper doesn’t don a mask here but delves into the panopticon of her own life with all its highs and lows, translating joys and pain, longings and their fulfillment into words and music. Through the songs, many encounters with herself at different points in her life became possible. “I’ve lived through a lot in the past 23 years, spinning incessantly around my own axis, but all of that has to be reflected upon from the perspective of the present.” With “Time Traveler” Ute Lemper accomplishes the unusual feat that, for listeners, the 23 years which lie between the individual songs aren’t obvious at all. The present in the past and the past in the present merge as if by osmosis. In the three old songs, Ute Lemper has partially changed the depth of focus lyrically and musically; on the other hand, the seven new songs fully engage with life experiences without corrupting them. She leaves it to the listener to identify the joints between the layers of time for themselves.

“As you get older,” she says Ute Lemper about the way her own two respective life and personality phases interpenetrate, “you constantly uncover new secrets, and these secrets can be so much better illuminated in lyrics and music. The Ute of old learns from the new Ute that less is always more, and that the quiet is always more fascinating than the loud. The lyrics must contain secrets which allow listeners to rediscover secrets of their own. I still carry the young Ute in me but have the opportunity now to allow her more room.

With her new album, Ute Lemper emancipates herself musically from all categories. Depending on socialization and personal preferences one can hear these songs as pop, rock, jazz, soul or chanson, all of these at once, or simply just as Ute Lemper. She is no longer ready to live up to any expectations, but rather draws inspiration from songs that she herself enjoys listening to. This includes references to artists and bands like Hiatus Kaiyote, John Legend, Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, Erykah Badu or Robert Glasper but without attempting to copy any of them.

All songs are one hundred percent Ute Lemper. In some pieces she takes risks in terms of production and sound, initially luring the listener onto a completely wrong path, such as in the title track; in others she conceals small surprising details in the production, putting the songs, herself and not least of all the auditory perception to the test over and over again.

“Time Traveler” is a very personal album, but its message extends far beyond Ute’s own life experience. As society narrows our perception down to a moment that seems to be ever shorter, we forget the importance of taking the past on board and learning from it. “Progress is gaining more and more speed, and we are not encouraged to look in the rearview mirror,” postulates Ute Lemper. “As soon as we embed our lives a little bit more in the past, we learn some interesting things. The more I involve myself with the young Ute, the more I can grasp why I do all of this in the first place.”

With “Time Traveler,” Ute Lemper has given a wonderful gift to herself. And yet, first and foremost, it is an album that functions like a signpost. In the unsparing self-honesty with which, in a most accessible way, Ute Lemper reflects on her life, it’s possible for most listeners to find themselves as well.

Click the links below for more info:

• pdf of CD Booklet and Cover Art
• CD Catalog Page for “Time Traveler”
• Printable pdf of Press Release

I am so excited to present my new single ‘TIME TRAVELER’ with a cutting edge and mind blowing video!
Click on the image above to see the video on YouTube. ‘Time Traveler’ is the new single from my upcoming album of the same name.

Credits :
Music and lyrics by: Ute Lemper
Video by: WEAREM2

You can also listen to ‘Time Traveler’, a bridge between past and present, and other music by Ute, at any of the links below:
Spotify: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnSpotify
Deezer: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnDeezer
Apple Music: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnAppleMusic
Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/UteLemperOnAmazonMusic
YouTube Music:    / ute lemper – topic  

A never before seen image of Lemper from her soon-to-be-released album – Photo: Guido Harari

Publication: Town and Country Magazine
BY: DANIEL CAPPELLO
Date: FEB 10, 2023

With a new book and album—both titled “Time Traveler”—the chanteuse is showing no signs of slowing down.

“This is a very big year for me,” Ute Lemper, sitting among keyboards, drums, and violin and cello cases in her Upper West Side penthouse music studio, lets slip with a sly smile, “I have a big birthday—a big round one.” Don’t let Lemper fool you: the German chanteuse, famous for her powerhouse vocals and dramatic stage presence, is proof that age, especially 60, is just a number. With an autobiography and new album set to be released later this year—both titled “Time Traveler”—Lemper shows no signs of slowing down. She just wrapped a run of weekend performances at the Neue Galerie’s Café Sabarsky, here in New York, and is in final rehearsals for tonight’s one-night-only show at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C. Pegged to the Valentine’s Day weekend, it’s being billed as a “Songs from the Broken Heart” program.

Though somewhat more casual than the sleek, sculptural persona who glides onto the stage with femme-fatale platinum curls in a silky, plunging black gown, she exudes a sort of incandescent aura that radiates even in rehearsal. As she practices her stage saunter (“I’ll walk slowly…slowly…slowly,” she tells the band, coordinating with cellist Matthew Parrish for when to chime in, “then I make a schwoop—a thing with my head”) and plays with pianissimos within the arrangements, she struts across the tiled floor in a fitted cardigan and pair of rumply black Lululemon pants, which, on her, look more Issey Miyake.

As the sun sets on a cold winter’s day, the midtown Manhattan skyline comes into sharp relief from the unfettered terrace views outside; the glow of illuminated buildings calls to mind the stage lights as she and her band polish the details. “I don’t think we should have the bass at the start,” she says while launching into Charles Trenet’s “Que reste-t-il de nos amours?” “Maybe fewer notes? I feel as if it’s a bit out of time.” Then follow other finesses: “Only the right symbol first on ‘de mon passé,’” she tells Todd Turkisher (her husband), on drums. “It kind of sneaks in,” she instructs. Gliding down the note on “le temps” in Leo Ferre’s “Avec Le Temps,” she turns to violinist Cyrus Beroukhim: “Didn’t you want to play this one an octave lower?” Her longstanding pianist, Vana Gierig, is so accustomed to working with her that he can pace himself by even the slightest movements of her back and breath.

Lemper, who catapulted to world fame in the ’80s with the release of a two-volume series of Kurt Weill recordings, was almost instantaneously anointed the Queen of Cabaret, just a young woman in her early 20s. Her tall, slender frame—then as now—belied a colossal voice with almost inconceivable resonance and control. She played Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of Cabaret, earning a Molière, before going on to interpret the role of Velma Kelly in London’s West End production of Chicago, earning an Olivier. Her vampy Velma replaced Bebe Neuwirth’s on Broadway, and she took home a New York Theater Award. In her over thirty-year solo career, she has cornered the market on the works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, which is to say nothing of her scintillating takes on Édith Piaf and Jacques Brel. She moves between languages and traverses decades with uncanny ease and unnerving acumen. She can lure you in with a husky, hushed whisper or knock you to the ground when reaching into her upper registers. Her belting power, on full display a few weeks ago in the quiet, wood-paneled walls of the Sabarsky setting, felt as if it might blow the windows out of the Beaux-Arts building’s ground floor.

Lemper was invited to the Kennedy Center as part of Renée Fleming’s VOICES series, a program Fleming curates as artistic advisor-at-large to showcase the diversity and versatility of the human voice. For Fleming, Lemper embodies the essence of cabaret tradition and style. “In her performances,” Fleming tells Town & Country, “she can create the whole milieu of a Weimar cabaret or a Parisian nightclub with a look, a gesture, or a vocal inflection.” According to Fleming, Lemper deploys an instrument of unlimited expressive range: “Ute can switch from the most silken, seductive purr to a growl, or a cry of anguish, within a single bar of music—all of it evocative and vocally assured.”

That vocal confidence comes from within. She grew up in Cold War Germany, “which certainly did traumatize all of us in my generation—to be there at the seam between east and west in this country that was basically occupied by four forces.” It was like living on a mine that could go off at any minute. In the ’80s, as the political climate marched closer and closer to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall, Lemper was in her formative years, watching from the city’s west as artists on the east were trying to make sense of an unstable world.

As she was recording her now landmark Weill volumes, it was a front-row seat to history and a firsthand lesson in the power of art. Those recordings almost single-handedly revived the existence of 1920s’ cabaret with a K, or “kabarett,” in the traditional Weimar way—not our somewhat saccharine and lighthearted American-style cabaret, but the avant-garde version with “a bite to it,” as she puts it, often political in nature and dedicated to freedom of expression and sexuality. As the Nazis suppressed any form of political criticism, Berlin cabaret, and its many Jewish composers, had to flee into exile. “I was very grateful and privileged to be the protagonist of this revival only because I was chosen to do this,” she reflects. “I took this very to my heart, very seriously, to be the ambassador of this repertoire because along with it came this incredible responsibility as a young postwar German.” To this day, Lemper is a scholarly performer who reaches into history, never letting us forget it. Every year at the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she performs multiple concerts of her “Songs For Eternity” program, which focuses uniquely on the works created between 1942 and 1944 by Jewish prisoners in the ghettos and concentration camps.

As she readies for tonight’s broken-hearts show in the Eisenhower Theater, Lemper is prepared to ramp it up with Harold Arlen’s “One for My Baby” or tug at the heart strings with some of the French classics, but she’s interested in more than just that. “History is not exactly repeating itself, but there are aspects that make you really think, don’t we ever learn? Why don’t we ever learn? How could there be a hot war, a ground war, in the Ukraine?” she asks, the passion rising in her voice. Metaphorically—and more importantly— tonight she will be singing for a broken world. “I feel, in this moment in time, that I really would like to bring a bit more of the political, the difficult, the edgy stuff—not just a song about being sad and sitting at the bar and having a whisky,” she says. “Songs from the broken heart, yes, but from the broken world—from the broken society, the broken confidence, the broken truth.”

Like her forthcoming autobiography, the show will be a sort of time-traveling retrospective of her life, including a share of her Weimar and Yiddish material as well as a section devoted to kindred spirit Marlene Dietrich, who fled Germany to support the American war effort. “This woman is such a woman of the future—she was 100 years ago as she is today,” Lemper beams. As part of her tribute to Dietrich, we’re in for a rare treat with her take on both Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, whom Dietrich happened to love herself. “You know, when I was younger, I liked the big stuff, but now I really like the little moments where the humanity shines through and you can take people on an emotional journey,” Lemper muses in a hushed, reflective tone. You can almost hear a haunting preview of her interpretation of that Seeger song: “Oh, when will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn?”

Read the article online on Town and Country here.

On Thursday 8 June, 2023 at 20h00, Ute will premiere her Autobiography ‘Die Zeitreisende. Zwischen Gestern und Morgen.’ in Berlin at Tipi am Kanzleramt.

The book is an in-depth look at the eventful life of an unusual woman. A journey through time full of episodes that ultimately result in a holistic picture in ‘Die Zeitreisende’, sensitively told with passion and verve.

You can read more about this event (in German) by clicking here, and tickets for this presentation can be purchased here.

Here is a selection of photos from rehearsal to performance of Ute’s Mexico City performances, with UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra, with Ivan López Reynoso guest conductor, in September 2022. (Photos: courtesy of Música UNAM/Paola F. Rodríguez)