Germany's Ute Lemper has earned worldwide acclaim for her multifaceted career as a vocalist, composer, performer, and screen presence. The 1986 album Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill positioned her early as a leading voice for the cabaret repertoire of Weimar Germany. Her 1989 release Crimes of the Heart placed her squarely in a pop context. By 1993 the international hit Illusions demonstrated her command of French chanson. She joined forces with Stephen Sondheim for the 1995 project City of Strangers. Punishing Kiss, issued in 2000, featured original material penned expressly for her by contemporary writers. In 2015 she turned to the poetry of Pablo Neruda for Forever: The Love Poems of Pablo Neruda, then partnered with Brazilian author Paulo Coelho on the 2016 song cycle The Nine Secrets. Rendezvous with Marlene, released in 2020, paid homage to Marlene Dietrich. Time Traveler, an entirely original collection issued by Jazzhaus in June 2023, merged privately taped songs from earlier decades with fresh compositions.
Born in Münster on July 4, 1963, Lemper began piano and dance lessons at age nine before pursuing theater training at the Max Reinhardt Seminary in Vienna and completing further studies in Salzburg, Cologne, and Berlin. After taking the stage in the Viennese mounting of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats in 1983, she assumed the title role in the musical Peter Pan two years later. Her portrayal of Sally Bowles in a 1986 European revival of Cabaret earned a Molière award during its run at Paris' Théâtre Mogador. Following an international tour devoted to the songs and life of Kurt Weill, she moved into film with appearances in Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books and Robert Altman's Ready to Wear.
Her discography encompasses the 1991 pop-oriented Crimes of the Heart, the Michael Nyman collaboration Songbook, and further tributes to Weill, Berthold Brecht, Edith Piaf, and Marlene Dietrich. In 1998 she starred in the West End production of Chicago; the following spring brought Punishing Kiss, whose songs were written for her by Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Neil Hannon, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and Scott Walker. The project departed from her prior work and prompted a reassessment of her artistic identity. Energized by the recording and its tour, she began writing her own material. In the New York studio of future husband Todd Turkisher she sketched lyrics on paper, developed melodies at the piano, and captured ideas on analog tape. Several pieces surfaced on 2002's But One Day..., while the remainder stayed archived in her in-laws' basement. Additional songs were composed for 2008's Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, yet none of the early tape material appeared on that release.
She moved to Steinway & Sons for 2012's Paris Days, Berlin Nights, which gathered works by Astor Piazzolla, Chava Alberstein, Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Jacques Brel. After another global tour she assumed compositional duties alongside Argentine bandoneón player and composer Marcelo Nisinman, resulting in the tango-inflected Forever: The Love Poems of Pablo Neruda. Still active as a songwriter, she next collaborated with Brazilian novelist and former 1970s hit songwriter Paulo Coelho, setting selections from his novel Manuscript Found in Accra. Performed by her touring ensemble together with an international cast of musicians, the project featured wind, reed, and brass charts by Gil Goldstein and Middle Eastern string arrangements by Jamshied Sharifi. Released in February 2016 as The 9 Secrets, the album included guest appearances by Coelho on two tracks.
Lemper deepened her engagement with the Dietrich legacy through the 2019 stage revue Rendezvous with Marlene, later recording and producing the material with orchestra for Jazzhaus. Issued in summer 2020, the collection drew on a three-hour telephone conversation between the two artists in 1988 and incorporated several songs linked to Dietrich, among them a bilingual rendition of Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" performed in German and English.
In 2021 the tapes left in her in-laws' basement were recovered along with a backup cassette. Lemper and Turkisher restored and digitized the originals. Certain selections proved too dated for revision, while others retained sufficient vitality for fresh treatment. Production adjustments placed fragments of her younger voice alongside newly sung lyrics set against updated grooves. Seized again by the urge to write, she returned to paper and piano; the title track of Time Traveler became the first piece to surface from this dialogue between her present and earlier selves. Jazzhaus issued Time Traveler in June 2023.
