Barbara Cook: She Still Has the Magic

An enthralled, but less than capacity, audience at Symphony Hall in Boston last weekend engaged in a musical love affair with the inimitable Barbara Cook, who presented her "No One Is Alone" concert compliments of the Bank of America Celebrity Series. For 90 uninterrupted minutes the lovely Ms. Cook stood center stage with just a hand held microphone and cast an inviting spell over her adoring fans, keeping them warm and cozy while the cold, wet snow just outside the door was temporarily forgotten.

Accompanied beautifully by her music director Lee Musiker on piano and Peter Donovan on bass, Ms. Cook bathed nearly two dozen familiar and not so familiar song standards in her silken soprano, the audience giving her thunderous ovations after each selection. Built as a tribute to Stephen Sondheim, the concert featured many of his works as well as those of composers who influenced or collaborated with him along the way.

Ms. Cook began her program a capella from the wings. Her voice filled the acoustically magnificent hall with the opening verse of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," creating an aura of anticipation that erupted in wild applause when she made her grand entrance. She immediately segued into "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" followed by a slow and soulful "It Might as Well Be Spring." "(I'm in Love with) A Wonderful Guy" from South Pacific was next, punctuated by a wonderful adlib about its age and how well it has held up over the years. So has Ms. Cook.

Her story about entering the business in 1942 at the age of 15 by winning the Ted Fitch amateur night revealed that she will turn 80 this year. She looks and sounds about 20 years younger than that. While her voice may not have the power and range it once had, it is still lilting and supple – and she proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that belting is highly overrated. Ms. Cook effortlessly draws the listener into her world, demanding that they quiet themselves in order to hear and feel the emotions at play in her songs.

Throughout the evening she moved gracefully from heartfelt ballads like "Long Before I Knew You" and "I Fall in Love Too Easily" to up-tempo jazz numbers like Yellen-Bigelow-Bates' "Hard Hearted Hannah," Rodgers and Hart's "You're What I Need," and Hammerstein and Romberg's "Lover Come Back to Me." She can get bluesy, too, as she did with her haunting arrangements of "I Had Myself a True Love" and "So Many People in the World," a ballad that Stephen Sondheim wrote for his first show "Saturday Night" at the age of 21. At the latter song's conclusion, Ms. Cook sighed and said, "Tell me he can't write melody."

To mix things up, Ms. Cook gave the evening a little swing with Gershwin's "Nashville Nightingale" and a little humor with a Cliff Edwards novelty number, "If Our Doggies Love Each Other, Why Can't We?" Even her bark was beautiful in that piece. Her most powerful numbers, though, were from Sondheim's "Into the Woods" – a stirring "No One Is Alone" and a pleading "No More," both of which she laced with a poignant relevance to our turbulent and troubling times.

Ms. Cook in concert is delightfully unpretentious. Maybe it's due in part to her age. "I'm old, what can I tell you?" she quipped when telling the story of her vaudeville days. But it's more likely that she simply loves her music and loves sharing it with appreciative fans. After her trademark encore – "We'll Be Together Again" sung gently without amplification to a hushed and riveted crowd – she placed her hand to her heart and waved her thanks to everyone in the house.

The adoration was mutual.

PHOTOS:

1. Barbara Cook (credit, Mike Martin)
2. Left to right, Jeff Thomson, host of the BDO Siedman post show reception, Barbara Cook, and Celebrity Series President Martha H. Jones (credit, Jack Wright)