This one has been on the bucket list for ages.  I have loved Ute Lemper’s work since I discovered it back in the 1980s but had never had a chance to see her live.  Last night she played Massey Hall which was. a big enough deal for me to miss an opening at the COC of one of my favourite operas.  (Fear not, I’m going to Cunning Little Vixen tomorrow).

She was appearing with the Filmharmonic Orchestra and its conductor Francis Choinière.  It’s perhaps a rather large orchestra (40+) for Lemper’s rep but it was used fairly sparingly and a lot of the time the accompaniment was by Vana Glerig at the piano.

She knows her audience and in presenting a concert that covered most of the bases of her forty year career she mixed humour, nostalgia and contemporary relevance rather well.  She knows how to work the room!

After an orchestral intro; a soupy arrangement of I’ve Got Rhythm, Lemper gave us some Piaf and the opening number from Cabaret as well as some good anecdotes about the Paris premier of that work.  Then it was into what I imagine most of us had really come for; a substantial set of Berlin cabaret and stage songs.  It was billed as Brecht/Weill but it included plenty of stuff by other composers like Spoliansky’s It’s All a Swindle and an updated version of Holländer’s Chuck Out the Men which included a certain female nutter on the SCOTUS in the chucking out list.  The classics like Mackie Messe and Salomon Lied were there too.  She sang the set in a mixture of English and German with great attack and a certain coarseness that the music needs.  Excellent stuff and she’s also fun to watch.

The second half kicked off with two more soupy orchestral numbers; Moon River (straight from beautiful downtown Burbank) and, rather grotesquely, Summertime.  Ms. Lemper soon put things right though with some wistful Jacques Brel songs and then a couple of really good Astor Piazzolla tangoes.  Not only did Lemper show she had the raunchy tango nuevo style down pat but the band produced its best playing of the night.  Definitely a highlight.  Four languages too, so pretty versatile.

After All That Jazz the audience went nuts (fair enough) and we got two encores which was generous. It was the best part of two hours of music and anecdotes with Lemper to the fore for a good three quarters of it.  She’s still an amazing performer with a complete mastery of the range of styles she sings, the ability to bring an audience on side and the voice is still in pretty decent shape too.  I don’t think anyone went home disappointed.

Photos from the web.