A CABARET OF SORTS DIVA COMBINES PASSION, EDGY IMPULSIVENESS.Byline: Reed Johnson Reed Cameron Johnson (born December 8, 1976 in Riverside, California) is an outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays of the American League East division of Major League Baseball. He weighs 180 lb (82 kg) and is 5'10" tall. Staff Writer Life is a cabaret, old chum, except when the life in question is Ute Lemper's. Then life is more like a combination Weimar nightclub act, Hollywood screwball screw·ball n. 1. Baseball A pitched ball that curves in the direction opposite to that of a normal curve ball. 2. Slang An eccentric, impulsively whimsical, or irrational person. adj. comedy and one-woman rave party. ``I don't think strategically in my life, I think passionately,'' says Lemper, speaking by phone from her home in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of City's Upper West Side, where she lives with her husband, actor David Tabatsky, and the couple's two young children. Coming from any run-of-the-mill blond bombshell of a diva, the remark might sound melodramatic, even false. Coming from Lemper, who performs with her band at 8 p.m. Friday at UCLA's Royce Hall Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870-1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881-1962) in the Italian Romanesque Revival style and completed , it's a pretty fair take on a career of breathtakingly purposeful impulsiveness. Exhibit A is Lemper's latest disc, ``Punishing Kiss,'' much of which she'll perform Friday night. Clearly fashioned as a calling card into the world of pop diva-hood, ``Punishing Kiss'' is a collection of darkly theatrical songs specifically written for Lemper by the likes of Nick Cave, Elvis Costello  The of this article or section may be compromised by "peacock terms".You can help Wikipedia by removing peacock terms. , Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is a three-times Academy Award-nominated American composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century[1][2][3][4][5] and Tom Waits. Several cuts, in their sardonic humor and ironic self-awareness, evoke the music of Kurt Weill, among whose most prominent latter-day interpreters Lemper now belongs. It's hard, for instance, to listen to Cave's droning ``Little Water Song,'' about a drowned woman, or Waits' ``Purple Avenue'' without picturing Weill's universe of what Lemper approvingly describes as ``loners, losers, drunks, sailors, whores'' and other ``lost souls but truly passionate people.'' In some ways, Lemper says, these new tunes harken har·ken v. Variant of hearken. Verb 1. harken - listen; used mostly in the imperative hark, hearken listen - hear with intention; "Listen to the sound of this cello" back to 1930s German cabaret, a genre in which performers saw themselves not simply as polished promoters of feel-good after-dinner entertainment, but as scrappy agent provocateurs using art to unmask (or at least goose the heck out of) sexual, political and cultural hypocrisy. ``I'm more in the (style of) the usual European cabaret performer, which is more somebody who looks for edges and provocation and uncomfortable twists in stories,'' she says with audible pleasure. It still takes some mental stretching to recall that Lemper, 36, began her professional stage career in the original Vienna production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's ``Cats.'' Later, she moved on to play Peter in ``Peter Pan'' and Sally Bowles in the Paris revival of ``Cabaret,'' while also developing a kick-butt cabaret routine that has made her a critical darling from Berlin to Sydney. She also applied her husky, enthralled en·thrall tr.v. en·thralled, en·thrall·ing, en·thralls 1. To hold spellbound; captivate: The magic show enthralled the audience. 2. To enslave. soprano to the role of Velma Kelly in the recent London and Las Vegas productions of Kander and Ebb's ``Chicago.'' ``People were sitting in the audience with their beepers and their cell phones and they were betting while we were on stage,'' she says bemusedly of the latter venue. Lemper frequently fashions herself as a modern femme femme adj. Slang Exhibiting stereotypical or exaggerated feminine traits. Used especially of lesbians and gay men. n. 1. Slang One who is femme. 2. Informal A woman or girl. fatale, who can segue with seeming effortlessness from a vampy, world-weary cynicism worthy of Dietrich to the misty-eyed resiliency of the late-career Edith Piaf (both of whose signature songs she has recorded). Yet it's hard not to detect a certain playful distancing from these stylized styl·ize tr.v. styl·ized, styl·iz·ing, styl·iz·es 1. To restrict or make conform to a particular style. 2. To represent conventionally; conventionalize. musical portrayals. It's as if this highly intelligent, boldly outspoken performer can't bear to let even herself get too far over the top. ``I try to stay kind of faithful to a truly theatrical performance, but with a much rougher vocal approach,'' she says. ``I don't think about vocal education and I don't think about pitch and everything, but about singing straight from the guts.'' THE FACTS --What: Ute Lemper in concert with her band. --Where: Royce Hall, UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX main campus. --When: 8 p.m. Friday. --Tickets: $35, $45. Call (310) 825-2101 or online at www.cto.ucla.edu. CAPTION(S): photo, box Photo: Soprano Ute Lemper will sing of ``lost souls but truly passionate people'' at Royce Hall on Friday. Box: THE FACTS (see text) |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion