Kurt Weill
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Ballad Of The Soldier's Wife wav (961k) aiff (961k) real audio |
The great songs of German-born composer Kurt Weill receive original interpretations on September Songs, a collection from Sony Classical that serves as the soundtrack for an innovative film project from director Larry Weinstein. Produced by the legendary Hal Wilner and featuring an all-star line-up of artists from the pop, alternative, classical, rock, jazz, and gospel worlds, September Songs presents the cabaret and theater songs of Kurt Weill in new performances that capture the rawness and bittersweet edge of Weill's creativity.
Among the collaborators on this unusual projects are Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, David Johansen, Betty Carter, Mary Margaret O'Hara, The Persuasions, Charlie Haden, Teresa Stratas and William S. Burroughs. September Songs also includes vintage recordings of the composer's wife, singer Lotte Lenya, his most famous collaborator, Bertolt Brecht, and Weill himself.
Filmmaker Larry Weinstein was inspired to create the film September Songs after hearing music producer Hal Wilner's 1986 Weill tribute recording Lost in the Stars. Wilner's recording featured Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, Lou Reed and other artists creating a striking array of interpretations of Weill's songs, most of them written for his German ballad-operas of the 1920s, created with playwright Bertolt Brecht, or for Broadway musicals after Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya fled to the USA after Hitler came to power. Weinstein brought Wilner on board as the music supervisor for September Songs, a film in which each of the songs stands alone as a vignette, much as the songs do in the original version of Weill and Brecht's opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
