Getting to the Truth of It

Like her lusty version of Velma Kelly in the Broadway musical “Chicago,” her bravura renderings of the music of Kurt Weill and her dramatic reinterpretations of classic French cabaret numbers, Ute Lemper’s conversation reaches out in all directions, sometimes larger-than-life expansive, sometimes close and intimate.

“I’m not a romantic performer,” says the German-born singer-dancer. “I don’t like to be private on stage, in a sense. I like to touch the real desperate points with the kind of storytelling that is situational and cinematic, laying out situations, locations and specific characters in a theatrical context.”

Which is exactly what Lemper does in her latest album, “Punishing Kiss,” a postmodern effort to reinvent cabaret via new compositions by, among others, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Philip Glass and Tom Waits. Many of the songs on the album, which was released Tuesday, will be featured Friday when the blond, 6-foot-tall performer appears at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

A dramatic career shift, the album is a risky effort to bring together elements of European and American cabaret with contemporary pop music sensibilities. Lemper’s reference points reach from the politicized songs of the Weimar era to the French chanson world of the ‘50s and ‘60s to her affection for such singer-songwriters as Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman.

Would the Songwriters Be Interested?

The project came to life when David Sefton, director of London’s Flux and Meltdown Festivals, suggested that Lemper persuade Costello, Cave, Scott Walker and others to write new material for the album. She loved the idea but had a number of doubts. The first was whether any of the composers would have any interest. The second was how to make such highly individualistic material her own.

As it turned out, there was plenty of interest. Costello wrote three songs for Lemper. Waits offered a pair, and Glass suggested she do his “Streets of Berlin,” originally written to be sung by Mick Jagger in the film “Bent.”

Making the material her own, however, was a more difficult task.

“That was a critical moment,” she recalls, “because an Elvis Costello song is an Elvis Costello song. It’s only the best when he sings it himself, with his incredible timbre.

“I knew it would only work if I stayed truthful to what I wanted to do, and there were times when I stood very much alone. So I had to really work hard to convince people: ‘You’re not leaving me enough space here to perform. . . . No, that’s just a simple rock ballad feeling, the groove has to be darker. . . . That’s too conventional; go more experimental, do it more artistic.’ Things like that. With my Westphalian thick head, my wooden head, I stood there and held my ground and said, ‘This is how it has to be.’ ”

The result is a collection that may well fulfill Lemper’s desire to establish herself as a new alternative pop diva. If so, it will represent yet another creative identity for an an already well-established artist with multiple accomplishments.

Born in Munster, Lemper, 36, started out performing in musicals, but she eventually found that medium creatively restricting.

“What really killed me was the fact of having to do it eight times a week,” says Lemper, now a New York resident. “It wasn’t fulfilling anymore after a while. I love to be creative, to every day discover something new and exciting, to ask more questions, to reinvent yourself. So when I get stuck in a kind of one-dimension performance, I get frustrated.”

She found more creative room when choreographer Maurice Bejart created a ballet, “La Morte Suite,” for her. Lemper also toured Europe and the U.S. with her imaginative solo concerts of cabaret and Weill songs, and her albums include the pop-oriented “Crimes of the Heart” and the offbeat “Songbook,” a collaboration with composer Michael Nyman based on poetry by Shakespeare, Rimbaud et al. Her film appearances have included Robert Altman’s “Pre^t-a-Porter” and Norman Jewison’s “Bogus,” and she’s also a busy painter.

If there is one theme--beyond the self-expression and the theatricality--that has played through all of Lemper’s multiple creative activities, it is the importance of artistic truth.

“I knew that ‘Punishing Kiss’ was going to be something different, that it would make different demands,” she says. “But I also knew that it would work, so long as I didn’t compromise anything at all in terms of where I come from. Because you have to be completely truthful when you do things like the Waits and the Costello songs. It’s like movie cinema. It has to be a close-up--like one of those Hopper paintings, or like the Bukowski movie ‘Barfly’--done with no vanity at all.”

BE THERE

Ute Lemper, Friday at Royce Hall, UCLA, 8 p.m. $45. (310) 825-2101.