Barbara Cook

Check out the new Sondheim on Sondheim commercial now airing:

Barbara Cook infuses Roundabout’s Sondheim on Sondheim with a half-century of Broadway musical wisdom.

When Barbara Cook sings a song by Stephen Sondheim, it stays sung. She is one of the great interpreters of the American songbook, and the best friend any songwriter ever had. In recent years, however, she has focused mainly on Sondheim’s work, mastering the melodic richness and virtuosic wordplay one expects of the composer and lyricist, but going beyond to reveal warmth, insight, humanity in each performance.

Cook first made her mark as Broadway’s go-to soprano ingénue: her 1951 Broadway debut was in the ill-fated Flahooley, but she bounced back a couple of years later in Bernstein’s Candide, and followed that up as Marian the Librarian in The Music Man in 1957—the same year that West Side Story opened, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Cook said goodbye to Broadway in the early 1970s and established a thriving career as a concert and cabaret singer, performing at small clubs and large halls all over the world. She’s released well-received recordings at a rate that Lady Gaga would envy. Cook sings frequently at Carnegie Hall and remains the only female non-operatic singer ever presented by the Metropolitan Opera.

Amazingly, Cook hasn’t ever sung Sondheim in a great big Broadway show. Until now.

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It is my pleasure to announce further casting for Sondheim on Sondheim, directed and conceived by frequent Sondheim collaborator James Lapine. Joining Barbara Cook and Vanessa Williams will be Tom Wopat, Euan Morton, Norm Lewis, and Matthew Scott.

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