RUFUS WAINWRIGHT has never been an artist to repeat himself.
With a diverse back catalogue, the Canadian singer’s latest project sees him dive into the world of Kurt Weill with the Pacific Jazz Orchestra, releasing an album following a string of concerts.
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I’m A Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill is a richly dramatic and stylish collection that breathes new life into the German composer’s timeless songs from the 1920s-40s.
Rufus tells Jacqui Swift about finding new meaning in the music and why now felt like the right moment to record it . . .
WHEN did you first hear Kurt Weill songs, and which means the most? I first heard his songs after buying an album I saw in a record store when I was about 13 that looked super cool.
It was a funky lady, smoking a cigarette with a big smile. That was Kurt Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya [the album was called Lotte Lenya Sings American Theatre Songs Of Kurt Weill].
So it was really Lotte’s picture that got me going first.
Surabaya Johnny is my favourite Kurt Weill song. It’s a song I wish I’d written.
How did his songs influence your own writing and performance? He was a fan of drama and atmosphere – two elements which I definitely incorporate in my own work.
And I love how he’s willing to tackle the troubling subjects of the day, something I’ve never shied away from.
How do you approach a song like Mack The Knife and make it your own? My strategy was to combine the German version and the Bobby Darin version to have a kind of mid-Atlantic version.
I don’t usually have trouble with that, because my voice is so bizarre that everything I sing always ends up sounding like a Rufus Wainwright song.
Did any song surprise you once you started working on its arrangement? It Never Was You was a song I always overlooked and felt it just didn’t touch me.
But certainly, after my mother passed away I looked at it in a whole new light.
How are you balancing staying true to Weill while bringing your own personality and style? The thing about this whole project is that it’s great, but it’s also incredibly tragic.
Kurt Weill died at 50. I started doing these songs and performing them professionally when I was 50.
In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m transferring a lot of his spirit into his latter days, an age that he wasn’t able to really experience.
So I feel responsible for giving him a little bit more time on the earth.
When did you realise your live performance of these songs should be an album? Really, when we got there, after we heard the recordings.
None of this was ever intended to be a record.
We all just did it off the cuff and decided to record it last minute.
But once we listened to the tracks, we realised that there was something really special there, especially considering that the songs were written during a very troubling time politically.
This is a good moment to put that type of material out, since we are also in deep water at the moment.
How did the Pacific Jazz Orchestra come on board? They made the initial offer. I had sung some Kurt Weill songs at the Carlyle Hotel in New York for a small residency.
Then they came to me and said, ‘You know, we’d love to do something with you. Anything’.
And I put two and two together.
I’m A Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill is a richly dramatic and stylish collection that breathes new life into the German composer’s timeless songsCredit: Miranda Penn Turin
Your back catalogue is diverse and varied. Where does this work fit in? I consider my catalogue, my career and my life, in many ways, to be a tree that has many, many branches.
I would say this is connected to it.
Let’s say this is a sprouting flower from a twig.
Was this one of your most challenging projects? It was, but mainly because I was doing so much around it.
I was producing a musical in the West End called Opening Night and also putting the finishing touches on my Dream Requiem, which was to be premiered in Paris after this concert.
So yeah, I was spread super, super thin, and it was incredibly challenging, but that adds a manic energy to the performance, which works well with his material.
You can’t be too rested when you sing Kurt Weill.
What’s next? I’m shutting down the shop. I’m 100 per cent working on a new pop record.
I need to go back to my bread and butter and see what the kids are up to and take one more swipe at it.
You played Want One and Want Two for BBC Proms, was that night as special for you as it was for the audience? Yeah, it’s always special doing those records.
They represent such a pivotal moment in my life and they really made me who I am today.
Any more special performances of these albums in the future? I’ll do one periodically, here and there, for sure.
