Barbara Cook & Charles Isherwood Team Up for Cook Memoir

HarperCollins announced today the acquisition of a currently untitled memoir by Barbara Cook, the noted actress, singer, and concert performer. Cook's collaborator will be New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood. The world rights deal was negotiated by Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Harper, and Rakesh Satyal, Senior Editor, Harper; Cook's manager, Jeff Berger at Jeff Berger Management; and Isherwood's agent, David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects. The book will be published in the fall of 2012, the year of Cook's eighty-fifth birthday.

In the book, Cook will discuss her almost seventy years spent in the theater, beginning with her early iconic roles such as Cunégonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Amalia Balash in Jerry Bock's She Loves Me, and her career-defining and Tony-winning role as the original Marian Paroo in Meredith Willson's The Music Man. She will also discuss her struggles with depression and alcoholism in the 1970s, after which she recovered and started a concert career as one of the greatest and most acclaimed interpreters of the American songbook, with the songs of Stephen Sondheim, in particular, being her forte. Indeed, in 2010, at the age of 82, she was Tony-nominated as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in Sondheim on Sondheim.
Jonathan Burnham says, "Harper is thrilled and honored to have signed up a book by Barbara Cook, one of the greatest singers of our age. Her amazing career spans the Glory Days of Broadway and the American musical, and she has worked with many of the key composers, musicians, actors, and performers of her generation. Behind the triumphant professional life lies a striking personal story that demands to be told, and her memoir promises to be a truly remarkable one."

Rakesh Satyal says, "Simply put, no other living performer has the perspective on the evolution and interpretation of the American musical theater that Barbara Cook has. Her consummate artistry and unfailing work ethic are an inspiration to countless performers and composers, and her grace, quick wit, and inspired approach to music will make for a wonderful reading experience."

Barbara Cook says, "For a very long time, I've wanted to write about my life and experiences both on stage and off. And now, thanks to HarperCollins, I finally get my wish. And the added bonus is that I have as a collaborator one of the most knowledgeable and insightful theater writers I know, Charles Isherwood. I feel very fortunate to have been a performer during the golden age of Broadway and am looking forward to sharing stories from that time in my memoir."

Barbara Cook received rave reviews and a Tony Award nomination last season for her performance in Sondheim on Sondheim, which marked her return to the Broadway stage after an absence of 23 years. Ms. Cook's recent appearances include three sold-out concerts celebrating her 80th birthday with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall and a critically acclaimed new show, Here's To Life, at Feinstein's at the Regency. In the past few years, Ms. Cook also returned to Carnegie Hall for her sixth solo concert and made an historic solo concert debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, where she became the first female solo pop singer to be presented in concert by the Met. Ms. Cook won a NY Drama Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk award for her concert Barbara Cook's Broadway and was nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her previous concert, Mostly Sondheim.

Her many Broadway credits include the creation of three classic roles in the American musical theatre: Cunégonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (Tony Award), and Amalia in Bock and Harnick's She Loves Me (Drama Desk Award).
In 1975 she made her Carnegie Hall debut and embarked on a second career as a concert and recording artist performing to critical acclaim in most of the country's major concert halls and cabarets throughout the United States and abroad.
A Grammy Award winner, her many recordings for DRG Records include Barbara Cook: Live From London, Oscar Winners: The Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein, All I Ask Of You, The Champion Season: A Salute to Gower Champion, Mostly Sondheim, Barbara Cook's Broadway, the Grammy nominated Count Your Blessings, Tribute, the live performance cd, Barbara Cook at the Met, No One Is Alone and Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder and the boxed set The Essential Barbara Cook.
Her most recent recording is Cheek to Cheek, a live performance cd of her critically acclaimed show with Michael Feinstein that premiered last fall at Feinstein's at the Regency.

Charles Isherwood, a theatre critic for the New York Times, is formerly the chief theater critic of Variety and recipient of the George Jean Nathan award for theater criticism.

HarperCollins, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world, is a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing groups around the world including the HarperCollins General Books Group, HarperCollins Children's Books Group, Zondervan, HarperCollins UK, HarperCollins Canada, HarperCollins Australia/New Zealand and HarperCollins India. HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children's books, cookbooks, mystery, romance, reference, religious and spiritual books. With nearly 200 years of history HarperCollins has published some of the world's foremost authors and has won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott. You can visit HarperCollins Publishers on the Internet at http://www.harpercollins.com.

 

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos