Noise and Smoke: Hits of Weimer Berlin

In this hit show from last season, chanteuse Karen Kohler is joined by award-winning singer/actor Dirk Weiler and John Bowen on piano in new translations and interpretations of the songs of Weimar-era Berlin. Composed by (among others) Kurt Weill, Friedrich Holländer, Mischa Spoliansky and Werner Richard Heymann, the songs made stars of Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich, Claire Waldorff, Curt Bois and many more. Since they were written by many Jews and dealt with sex, scandal, swindle, greed and other vices, these songs were labeled as “degenerate art” by the Nazis in the late 1930s and banned from performance. The artists fled Hitler’s Germany, many of them arriving in the USA.