CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES — a photography exhibit by Geoffrey Hiller entitled Daybreak in Myanmar is at the Fort Wayne, Indiana Museum of Art through May 29th.
Now in Fort Wayne, IndianaHAIL and FAREWELL to two sports names: first, the former Columbia University and NBA basketball player Jim McMillian— whom I erroneously thought had come back into the spotlight as New York City’s The Rent is Too Damn High politician (a different man, it turned out) — who has died at the age of 68 ….. and to the former major league baseball infielder Dick McAuliffe— who had the most pronounced open-batting stance I ever saw — who has died at the age of 76.
INTERESTING READ #1 for this week is Confronting the Parasite Economy by the gadfly wealthy man Nick Hanauer — who says he can stop contributing to the problem with higher minimum wage laws (which thwart the low-road employers that he must compete against).
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Ruby the Cat— this young man’s …. prom date.
Sam …… and Ruby the CatENVIRONMENTAL NOTES — the South American government of Uruguay is drafting legislation to finance waste-management programs with the proceeds of a tax on firms that generate pollution.
A SIGN OF PROGRESS in a nation torn apart by civil war for over ten years: at a busy crossroads in central Freetown, Sierra Leone— now appears that nation’s first traffic light in fourteen years.
FRIDAY's CHILD is nicknamed the Kirkwall Tesco Cat— a Scottish kitteh who greets shoppers outside a Tesco supermarket in the Orkney Islands.
Daytime supermarket visitorINTERESTING READ #2 for this week is I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump— and is self-explanatory.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC, as well as the Science Friday Quiz from NPR.
THIS COMING SUNDAY I will feature Odds & Ends - a wrap-up diary of my postings, circa noon Eastern (9 AM Pacific). I hope you'll vote in the "Who Lost the Week?!?" poll (a mirror image of the one Bill posts here). Dang, there are already bushel baskets of misfits lined-up for your review (such as Nissan, Suzuki and Mitsubishi Motors, the deputy speaker of France’s National Assembly, Phil Mickelson and “The Wire” actor Wendell Pierce) .... and the week's not over yet.
SEPARATED at BIRTH — Canadian TV star Nathan Fillion (from the recently cancelled “Castle” show) and Matteo Renzi— Italy’s prime minister.
TV star Nathan Fillion ... … and Italy’s Matteo Renzi...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… I can’t say that I am a huge fan of cabaret music, but sometimes a certain performer does capture my imagination. One who did that in the 1990’s was Nancy LaMott (with her contemporary Susannah McCorkle being more of a jazz singer).
And someone I have come to admire is a cabaret singer known as much for her starring roles in plays as much as straight singing, Ute Lemper— perhaps the foremost performer of the music of Kurt Weill/Marlene Dietrich there is today. She has had lead acting roles in Paris, London and New York and in recent years began composing her own works. If you’re unfamiliar with her ... read on.
Born in Münster, Germany (although quite apropos for a longtime US resident, on the 4th of July in 1963) she studied piano and dance (singing for awhile in a jazz-rock band). She later graduated from the Max Reinhardt Drama School in Vienna and in 1983, starred in the original Viennese production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.
This led to starring roles in Peter Pan as well as Sally Bowles in a Paris revival of Cabaret — which won her a Molière Award. She has handled the role of Velma Kelly in productions of Chicago both in New York and in London (winning an Olivier Award for the latter).
She has appeared in films (mostly European) with one notable US film being Robert Altman’s 1994 Fashion Week comedy Prêt-à-Porter. She has also dubbed her voice for films such as The Little Mermaid and Kissing Jessica Stein and has even had some of her paintings exhibited in art galleries.
Yet she is known primarily for her cabaret singing. She has five albums dedicated to the music of Kurt Weill (with lyrics in German, French and English) with the most recent from 1993. She also has a 1996 album dedicated to songs from the Weimar Republic of Germany, before the war years.
In 2000, she began to record songs by contemporary composers, and refine her cabaret act here in the US. Punishing Kiss had songs by Tom Waits and three from Elvis Costello, then 2002’s But One Day has works by Jacques Brel and others, and her 2005 live album has a wide mix of songs, with several having a theme about the Moon: Van Morrison's Moondance, Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street," Joni Mitchell's "Moon at the Window," the old standard "It's Only a Paper Moon," and Tom Waits' "Grapefruit Moon" creating a theme.
In 2008, she released Between Yesterday and Tomorrow— in which one reviewer detected influences of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Jeff Buckley — yet was her first album of entirely self-written songs.
In the past few years, she recorded her own music to words by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, with a 2013 album including some of his works translated into English. And earlier this year, she released Nine Secrets— her music added to words by the Brazilian lyricist/author Paulo Coelho that reviewer Thom Jurek describes thusly: “Musically rich, elegantly performed, and brilliantly arranged, this date is a high-water mark in an already distinguished catalog”.
Performing in New York just the other day a review of her show noted that her repertoire has “steadily widened from German cabaret and theater music to encompass Middle Eastern, Indian and South American styles, which she swirled together in a concert with a humanitarian agenda”.
Ute Lemper will turn age 53 on Independence Day and has lived in New York for several years. She will embark on a European and South American tour for the next several months and will not perform again in the US until December. And one can only guess what musical path she will tread during 2017.
Ute Lemper years ago …… …… and in recent yearsWith her wide repertoire … what to choose? The Kurt Weill songbook is an obvious choice … perhaps too obvious. She performed in her native Germany with Roger Waters after the fall of the Berlin Wall …. but her portion (of his Brick in the Wall works) seems too short.
What I will feature is her rendition of a Stephen Sondheim show tune that was owned by the cabaret singer Elaine Stritch ….. yet now (after her death) is there for the taking. Ladies Who Lunch is from Sondheim’s 1970 Broadway musical Company which won six Tony Awards. And below you can hear Ute Lemper sing it at the renowned Cafe Carlyle in New York (from her 2005 live album).
I'd like to propose a toast: here's to the ladies who lunch ... Everybody laugh - lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch… on their own behalf Off to the gym, then to a fitting Claiming they're fat and looking grim Cause they've been sitting choosing a hat Does anyone still wear a hat? I'll drink to that
And here's to the girls who play smart - Aren't they a gas?
Rushing to their classes in optical art, wishing it would pass Another long exhausting day ... Another thousand dollars A matinee, a Pinter play Perhaps a piece of Mahler's … I'll drink to that: and one for Mahler!
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