Kennedy Center Weather Forecast: Storm Large

If you’ve felt some turbulence in the air amid all the springy weather we’ve been having here of late, it was probably a bit of foreshadowing.

Storm Large is back in town at the Kennedy Center, and she’s keeping good company.

Large — full name, Susan Storm Large — the full-deal singer, author, songwriter, actress, recording artist and former (2006) finalist on “Rock Star: Supernova,” is back. This time, she’s here for three concerts, in which she performers Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” today through Saturday, April 30. It’s something of a departure for a singer who’s gone from tour and club rock star to being part of Pink Martini to singing with the NSO Pops here in a Frank Sinatra concert last year.  

“Yeah, that’s quite a bit different,” Large said in a telephone interview while she was taking time out in her Portland home. “It’s a challenge, I gotta  say. There’s a lot of that Teutonic, serious stuff  going on here. Very, very dark, and not so much melodic and romantic music, and I’m a romantic. But you find your way in. You find the true things and the way to make it your own — the things that speak to you.”

Weill, who famously partnered with Bertolt Brecht on scathing anti-establishment musicals like “Happy End” and “The Three Penny Opera,” also teamed up — for the last time — on “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a relatively short work, with Brecht. “It’s the story of two sisters, named Anna l and II, who may personify facets of one woman and who leaves her childhood home in Louisiana and travels to seven different cities in seven years, during which she experiences the aspects of the seven deadly sins and their opposites. 

“She finds all of the seven sins, like envy, wrath, sloth, greed and so on, but also their opposites,” Large said. “It’s not easy, but I actually love the music and the challenge it presents me for me. You have to keep embracing new challenges. I just keep on moving as I get older. You kind of grow up, you know.”

Large had performed “The Seven Deadly Sins” with the Oregon Symphony. She’s a legend in Portland, where she was part of a punk band called “The Balls” for years and where she had a reputation for musical and emotional honesty and a dramatic, flamboyant and high-energy stage presence. The Oregon Symphony was scheduled to take the piece to Carnegie Hall, but because of financial and travel constraints it couldn’t do it. “They asked me if I could be a part of this with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music Festival.” Her answer was an emphatic yes.

It’s not her first prom with Brecht and Weill. Large starred as Sally Bowles in an Oregon theater production of “Cabaret” in 2007, but then she did a searing, nakedly honest, auto-biographical musical memoir called “Crazy Enough,” which ran for 21 weeks and was a hit in such diverse settings as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Festival in Australia and the legendary Joe’s Pub in New York. The book version — which is noted for its revelations about a dark childhood, abuse and youthful heroin addiction as well as her life as a rock star — was named Oprah’s Book of the Week and won the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Even on the phone Large is a forceful, vivid presence. She can segue from profanity-peppered chatty talk to a keen, intelligent awareness of her musical challenges and approaches. She takes compliments like a sweet, demure lass.

She performed with Pink Martini in 2011 at the Kennedy Center and last year released a remarkable album called “Le Bonheur,” a remarkable run through an entirely eclectic, torchy, rock and blues-imbued and just about heart-breaking group of songs that you tend to return to. They include her unique version, hot-to-the-heart-and-ear, of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” as well as his “It’s All Right With Me,” the unforgettable rockish ballad, “Unchained Melody,” “The Lady is a Tramp,”  the American boulevardier Tom Waits’s great “Saving All My Love For You,” the spritely “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed and two of her own compositions, the ravaging “A Woman’s Heart” and the anthem “Stand Up For Me”.

To get the full stormy effect of Large, check her out on her YouTube list: tall — six feet — and blonde. A full-ahead woman, whether she’s in front of orchestra or a punk band or by herself in the spotlight. She’s physical, funny, smart and death-defying.

Large performs with the National Symphony Orchestra at 7 p.m. Thursday, as part of the NSO Declassified Series at 9 p.m. Friday and at 8 p.m Saturday. James Gaffigan conducts and the vocal quartet Hudson Shad will also be on hand for the performances, which also include Rodgers’s “Carousel Waltz,” Ravel’s “La valse” and Dvorak’s “American Suite.”