Adrienne Haan’s ‘Berlin to Broadway-TransAtlantic’

The tribe of artists and performers that belong to the family of cabaret singers is always multiplying, adding to a roster that is full of its share of eccentrics, originals, and unforgettables.

You might want to add chameleons to that category, a quality firmly embraced with pizzazz by the self-described chanteuse Adrienne Haan who is brought her show “Berlin to Broadway-TransAtlantic” to the Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Saturday at 7:30 as a sparkling and unique part of the Embassy Series season. The remarkable Haan—who is part singer, part actress, part story-teller, multi-lingual and singular—presented a joy-ride through a variety of musical side-streets and international highways, accompanied by the internationally acclaimed pianist and conductor Richard Danley.

The program spoke to Haan’s chameleon musical bent—running through time, space and place from 1920s Berlin, a selection from a full bag of Broadway musical songs, French chanson from the tribe of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf, the American Songbook, sung in five different languages, including Yiddish and Hebrew.

There’s a breathless quality to that lineup which says a lot about how Haan approaches the often conflicted world of cabaret, whose inspirations seem to come from everywhere at once.

She called us from Germany this week, after getting over a severe bout with flu. “Fever, coughing, the whole nine yards,” she said. Although she was born in Essen, Germany, and holds dual citizens ship with Germany and Luxembourg, it’s very difficult to spot an accent over the phone. You suspect that she’s mastered idioms and slang with a remarkable naturalness.

“It’s very hard to pin point what a cabaret singer is, or cabaret music, sometimes, especially today,” she said. “You always think of Marlene Dietrich singing “Lily Marlene”, of course and the world of 1920s Berlin, where it truly began. But there is so much else. And today, really, you have so many people out there who basically have a following of their friends, they have a biography of sorts, but that’s it. That’s not cabaret.

“Personally, I like to think of myself a chanteuse, a singer, a particular kind of singer,” she said. “I am an actress, I’ve been in musicals, in the theatre. So in this way you are a story-teller.

I’d add that she is a pro, in the sense that she has respect for the world of cabaret, that it should be done right, and with a certain spirit that also respects the audience, is demanding of it and at one with it. “The perfect audience is one that appreciates what you’re doing,” she said.

This was first performance—“it’s a debut—in Washington. She was a master of setting in the sense that she is at home any place where she performs, with a symphony orchestra quartet, a band of her own in an edgy New York Club, or a setting like the Luxembourg embassy, which was up close and personal and intimate. No problem—she at turns charmed, flirted with, seduced and made close personal contact with the audience.

Check her out on You Tube and her own website—you get a sampling of Adrienne Haan in full dudgeon, knocking it out of the concert hall in front of a symphony orchestra in bright red, dazzling gown, or singing with a spotlight, dark background, starting with a mask. Doesn’t seem to matter where she is—she traps and seduces her audience to the point of ownership. She is a mezzo, but with her languages, her range, she can go long vocal distances to everywhere. She is a bit of a mugger in both sense of the word, that face and blue eyes bite into the song and she sings it as it is.

One critic called her a time traveler and I suspect that’s true—she has a keen interest in history, in poetry, in what history has wrought in culture. “When you consider Berlin in the 1920s, its about the history of the times, the rise of the Nazis, but also the music itself.”

Being a chameleon is not about looks, or whimsy, but about making adjustment with ease—from being totally serious, to being funny, to going from light to heavy. She can change her looks for sure, but the steadying part of her appearance—I’m guessing here—is an aspect of unforgettableness.

She is a graduate of the American Academy of Arts, and she and her husband live in Harlem, “which we love.” “New York,” she says, “isn’t really an American city, it’s a world city.”

She also performs in the New York world, especially at the Cutting Edge, an eclectic club that’s very much a reflection of her personality. Eric Clapton plays there in May. She has brought her show “Rock le Cabaret!”, a program of French chansons by Brel, Piaf and Aznavour, with a rock beat. “It’s different, for me too, but it’s a different way of looking at and doing the music.”

Her program at the Luxembourg Embassy seemed a reflection, of her taste, her life experience, the music she loves, the musical challenges she’s faced. It careened from Weimar to Broadway, to 1930s Hollywood, to the deepest part of Piaf, , to a burst of Brel, even an Ute Lemper composition.

That was Adrienne Haan, original, a story-teller and truth teller, a chameleon: unforgettable.