by Caitlin Kelley
Photo credit: Rikki Cooke
Every so often a performer emerges whose genuine conviction and artistry inspires the audience to contemplate the beauty and complexity of the human experience; mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke is such an artist. In her recital at Alice Tully Hall Monday evening—as winner of the Alice Tully Vocal Arts Recital Award—Cooke gave a captivating performance with pianist Pei-Yao Wang that included works by Britten, Copland, Crumb, Duparc, Poulenc, and Wolf.
Throughout every piece, Cooke displayed stunning technical ability and a sincere commitment to the repertoire, her luxurious tone permeating every corner of the hall. Her vocal command was all the more impressive considering the fact that she was extremely ill the evening of the performance, as we learned from a pre-concert announcement. Nevertheless, she performed with great warmth and deft execution, and had it not been for the occasional use of a handkerchief placed discreetly within the piano, no one would have suspected anything was amiss.
Cooke spoke to the audience several times throughout the evening, at one point sharing that, while preparing for the performance, she had been inspired to contemplate humanness, and how that relates to the intimate nature of the solo recital. Her down-to-earth sincerity and endearing sense of humor certainly highlighted Cooke's own humanity—an aspect not always apparent in the typical opera "diva."
As her vibrant career has shown thus far, however, Cooke is anything but typical. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, the Juilliard alumna received international attention for her role as Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, a production that subsequently earned a Grammy Award in 2012. Other recent performances include playing the title role in the San Francisco Opera's premiere of Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
During this performance, Cooke segued seamlessly and convincingly through the gamut of emotions that this program encompassed, delivering the text with both thoughtfulness and spontaneity. In Wolf's Mörike-Lieder, Cooke highlighted moments of earnest contemplation, inner turmoil, and playful humor, while leading the audience on a journey through the mysteries of the night and early-morning strolls in the forest. In the final song, "Der Tambour," she struck a childish pose with a lopsided smirk while singing with youthful energy and candor, her comical acting eliciting laughs from the audience.
Cooke conveyed the absurdity of Poulenc's Cinq Poèmes de Max Jacob with wit and sincerity, and her affinity for French music was evident in her contrastingly intimate and ecstatic performance of two selections by Duparc. The second half of the program included Crumb's Three Early Songs, as well as Britten's strange and beautiful A Charm of Lullabies, made all the more poignant by the fact that both Cooke and Wang are young mothers.
The evening concluded with Copland's American Pieces, in which Cooke breathed new life into "Simple Gifts" and gave a shoulder-bopping, toe-tapping rendition of "Ching-a-Ring chaw." Cooke and Wang were met with enthusiastic applause, and it can only be assumed that as the audience journeyed back out into the snowy night, it was with a greater warmth in their hearts.