with Werner Vana Gierig, piano; Don Falzone, bass; Eric Halvorson, drums; Hector Castro, bandoneón.

Ute Lemper's performing career grows out of a passionate and enduring commitment to art, politics and history, and out of a contentious and complicated relationship with her homeland and its past. Her panache, versatility and sophisticated repertoire - including Berlin cabaret songs and the dark gems of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill - have led her to international acclaim as a recording artist, and in the theatre, cabaret and film worlds.

Ute was born in Münster, Germany in 1963. After graduation from the Dance Academy in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Seminary Drama School in Vienna, she started performing in Stuttgart with roles in plays by Fassbinder and others. She went on to dazzle audiences in Europe and worldwide in musical theatre roles - Velma Kelly in Chicago (London, New York, Las Vegas), Lola in The Blue Angel, Peter in Peter Pan (both in Berlin), Cats in Vienna and Sally Bowles in Jérôme Savary's Paris production of Cabaret. Yet she has returned again and again to the dark, complex and powerfully creative German past, in solo concerts like Kurt Weil Recital and Berlin Cabaret Evening.

Ute's edgy aesthetic and repertoire also reach far beyond Germany. Ute has explored the French chanson from Edith Piaf to the Belgian poet Jacques Brel. She also explored the contemporary alternative rock repertoire – from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello to Nick Cave on her Punishing Kiss album – and finally created her own original material which can be heard on the latest album But One Day...

Not surprisingly, in 1994, Ute was named Billboard magazine's Crossover Artist of the Year, though when you listen to her, the idea of crossover melts away; it's simply Ute's sensibility: penetrating, adventurous, sophisticated, and charged with multiple meanings. Also on Ute's awards shelf: A 1998 Olivier for the London production of Chicago (she can be heard on the original London cast recording) and a Molière Award for Best Actress for the Savary Cabaret. She also won an American Theater Award for her performance in Chicago on Broadway, an Italian Primo Tenco award for her recordings, and numerous other international recording awards.

This year Ute has undertaken another world tour, with dates in Europe, Japan and the US. The But One Day Orchestra accompanies her symphony appearances, and she will also sing with Robert Ziegler’s Matrix Ensemble, featured on Berlin Cabaret Songs. She has created a new show, Nomad, with Robert Carson for the Chatelet Theatre in Paris. Nomad takes its audience through the past century's incidences of oppression, starting in Berlin, then moving through Hungarian, Jewish, Arab, Romany, South American and Russian cultures. Ute insists on presenting some of these songs in her concerts as they evoke an important political journey.

Ute's extraordinarily supple and expressive voice is not her only creative outlet. In musicals she has, of course, also danced, and Maurice Béjart created a ballet for her, La Mort Subite, which premiered in Paris in 1990. Her paintings have been shown at the German Consulate in New York, the Goethe Institute in Washington and, in Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville.

Ute has just recorded and co-produced with her partner, percussionist Todd Turkisher, a complete album of her own original songs. She wrote the music and lyrics and together with her band, arranged a unique song cycle of unusual stories about places, cities, lives and love.

Ute and her three children, Max , Stella, and Julian have had a home base in New York City for almost 10 years. Like Weill, Lemper is a German expatriate living in the United States. Unlike Weill and some of his contemporaries, Ute is an expatriate by choice, and is hesitant ever to move back to Germany, but she revisits her culture fearlessly and brilliantly in art. "As a performer," she says, "I like to breathe and live inside the centers of chaos in the worlds of today and yesterday. The longing for a place of harmony and the search for spiritual freedom lives through my new stories and melodies. I will always, though, keep Berlin alive with contemporary and nostalgic eyes," she reminds us, "as the lust and anarchy of Weimar shall live forever."

For more information, visit Ute Lemper online.