One of my resolutions plans for the new year is to do more writing about things I love, like art, music and theatre. (BTW, is there a group specifically for theatre dorks?)
Early last week I DVR'd this year's Kennedy Center Honors broadcast, and last night I celebrated the New Year by watching it. These programs are always a bright spot in my December, and I found this year's especially moving.
The honorees for 2011 were Sonny Rollins, Neil Diamond, Yo-Yo Ma, Meryl Streep, and — possibly the least known to most Americans — Barbara Cook.
Each of the individual tributes was stellar (in every sense), and each of the honorees shared at least one remarkable quality: they have all polished their particular contributions to America's performing arts into something dazzlingly luminous. But I want to focus specifically on Ms. Cook today.
It may seem more than a little presumptuous to imagine that, after having received this great honor, Barbara Cook stands in need of any endorsement from the likes of me. But here I am, nonetheless, to rejoice in her gifts as a singer and a human being. This is a woman whose crystalline soprano voice and fresh beauty brought her early acclaim on Broadway; that composers like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim chose her to interpret their music just about says it all in my book.
Then after an extended period of darkness in her life, she made a spectacular comeback as a cabaret performer, and today in her 80s she is generally regarded (by those who know such things) as the greatest standard bearer of the Great American Songbook there is. There are other great singers, and other great interpreters, but no one digs deeper into the emotional truth of a song or has a purer instrument than Barbara Cook. She's conquered the world twice — or at least her own corner of it, for I feel that she is, by and large, an under-appreciated treasure.
If you have fifteen minutes to spare, I urge you to watch this beautiful and moving tribute. It begins with a short recap of her remarkable life and career, followed (at 4:42) by a medley of songs she either introduced to the world, or has made her own, performed by some of the greatest women of Broadway in celebration of one to whom they — and we — are all in debt.
But no one does it like Barbara Cook herself. There are countless clips to be found on YouTube of her great interpretations of the classics of Broadway, jazz, and Tin Pan Alley, but I've selected this one to represent them all. Here she is at eighty years of age(!), absolutely killing this well-known tune:
Barbara Cook returned to Broadway in 2010 and snagged a Tony nomination for her appearance in Sondheim on Sondheim.