I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music.
There is only good music and bad music.”
Kurt Weill
Eclectic. Diverse. Brilliant. Kurt Weill wrote extraordinary songs. Songs of desire and love. Songs of hatred and anger. Songs of hope and renewal.
Why such eclectic brilliance?
Unlike Gershwin or Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kurt Weill was forever marked by his life in Germany in the 1920's and '30's, when that country was ripped apart by war, racism, economic strife and genocide. In response, Weill learned to shift between the sublime and the shocking in a heartbeat.
Bremner says: "I've been entranced by the music of Kurt Weill throughout my adult life. I started my musical career singing with a Punk Rock band, and since then I've sung Kurt Weill songs with punk bands, songs in lovely concert halls and in dark, dilapidated saloons. I've sung his music accompanied by rock guitars and with classical string quartets. I've never grown tired of his music. In fact I believe Kurt Weill was a Punk Rocker.
I know, that sounds ridiculous, but think about it -- the definition of Punk Rock is: "Punk Rock was a reaction to the self-indulgent excess of 70's rock bands, with their 15 minute solos and astronomical production budgets. Punk Rock was created by a generation that came of age in the 1970's and believed that the hippie ideals of peace, love and understanding were hypocritical, evil and doomed to failure”.
Kurt Weill (born in 1900) came of age in the Weimar period, which had just seen the excesses of the Belle Epoque drive a whole continent into nightmarish war. The musical generation before him included composers like Mahler and Strauss, whose symphonies demanded an army of orchestral musicians, not to mention full choirs and vocal soloists. Their lush, overblown musical language came directly out of the nationalistic romanticism of Wagner. So, just like the Punk Rockers, Kurt Weill decided to turn all that on its head.
I became aware of Kurt Weill's music around the same time I was sticking safety pins in my leather jacket, dying my hair blue and leaping into the mosh pit to bands like Black Flag. Something in Weill resonated with me. I knew nothing about Germany between the wars, nothing about the social and political turmoil that produced artists like Weill, Brecht, and Dix and Benjamin. But right from the start, my brain put the elusive name of Kurt Weill into the ranks of real music. Kurt Weill was a Punk Rocker!
Yet now, many years later, I wonder if that is actually all I need to say. Now that I know Mr. Weill much better. Now that I’ve read the biographies, the letters, listened to the early works and the last works, studied the musicals that were a success and the ones that were disasters. Now that I have sung so many of his wondrous, complex songs.
Why such eclectic brilliance?
Unlike Gershwin or Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kurt Weill was forever marked by his life in Germany in the 1920's and '30's, when that country was ripped apart by war, racism, economic strife and genocide. In response, Weill learned to shift between the sublime and the shocking in a heartbeat.
Bremner says: "I've been entranced by the music of Kurt Weill throughout my adult life. I started my musical career singing with a Punk Rock band, and since then I've sung Kurt Weill songs with punk bands, songs in lovely concert halls and in dark, dilapidated saloons. I've sung his music accompanied by rock guitars and with classical string quartets. I've never grown tired of his music. In fact I believe Kurt Weill was a Punk Rocker.
I know, that sounds ridiculous, but think about it -- the definition of Punk Rock is: "Punk Rock was a reaction to the self-indulgent excess of 70's rock bands, with their 15 minute solos and astronomical production budgets. Punk Rock was created by a generation that came of age in the 1970's and believed that the hippie ideals of peace, love and understanding were hypocritical, evil and doomed to failure”.
Kurt Weill (born in 1900) came of age in the Weimar period, which had just seen the excesses of the Belle Epoque drive a whole continent into nightmarish war. The musical generation before him included composers like Mahler and Strauss, whose symphonies demanded an army of orchestral musicians, not to mention full choirs and vocal soloists. Their lush, overblown musical language came directly out of the nationalistic romanticism of Wagner. So, just like the Punk Rockers, Kurt Weill decided to turn all that on its head.
I became aware of Kurt Weill's music around the same time I was sticking safety pins in my leather jacket, dying my hair blue and leaping into the mosh pit to bands like Black Flag. Something in Weill resonated with me. I knew nothing about Germany between the wars, nothing about the social and political turmoil that produced artists like Weill, Brecht, and Dix and Benjamin. But right from the start, my brain put the elusive name of Kurt Weill into the ranks of real music. Kurt Weill was a Punk Rocker!
Yet now, many years later, I wonder if that is actually all I need to say. Now that I know Mr. Weill much better. Now that I’ve read the biographies, the letters, listened to the early works and the last works, studied the musicals that were a success and the ones that were disasters. Now that I have sung so many of his wondrous, complex songs.
Maybe I also need to say that Mr. Kurt Weill was a delightful human being. In the extraordinary variety of his songs, we hear his delight in life and music Maybe I need to say that when he fled Nazi Germany, he fell in love with America, his new adopted country. Maybe I need to repeat my favorite Weill quote, from a letter to his beloved Lotte Lenya, as he is trying to soothe her anger at the failure of his new musical. He writes, "But, Lenya, that’s the theatre. It wouldn’t be so much fun if it weren’t so dangerous, so unpredictable.”
Kurt Weill’s favorite city in his new country was New York, and in that city he most adored the bustling 'Automats', the semi-automated populist diners that were the crossroads for every type of person in 1930's America. Weill loved milkshakes, that quintessential American drink, and I often imagine him with a milkshake in front of him, discussing new projects with writers like Langston Hughes and Ogden Nash, and all the while his bright eyes would be surveying the bustle around him: the secretaries, businessmen, taxi drivers, newspaper boys and all the other dreamers and strivers of Manhattan. I imagine how inspired he must have felt. I imagine he would have been delighted by the possibility that he might have a chance to explore their lives on stage, and that soon all these people might hum his songs.
I hope my new CD, 'Moon Faced, Starry Eyed', manages to show the amazing range of Weill’s creativity, his punk rock energy, and the delight he took in conveying the whole range of human emotion in song."
Kurt Weill’s favorite city in his new country was New York, and in that city he most adored the bustling 'Automats', the semi-automated populist diners that were the crossroads for every type of person in 1930's America. Weill loved milkshakes, that quintessential American drink, and I often imagine him with a milkshake in front of him, discussing new projects with writers like Langston Hughes and Ogden Nash, and all the while his bright eyes would be surveying the bustle around him: the secretaries, businessmen, taxi drivers, newspaper boys and all the other dreamers and strivers of Manhattan. I imagine how inspired he must have felt. I imagine he would have been delighted by the possibility that he might have a chance to explore their lives on stage, and that soon all these people might hum his songs.
I hope my new CD, 'Moon Faced, Starry Eyed', manages to show the amazing range of Weill’s creativity, his punk rock energy, and the delight he took in conveying the whole range of human emotion in song."