Barbara Cook to Play 5-week Engagement at Cafe Carlyle March 1 - April 1

Café Carlyle (located in The Carlyle Hotel, Madison Avenue at 76th Street), will present legendary concert artist Barbara Cook in a five-week engagement beginning March 1. Fresh from making her historic Metropolitan Opera debut, of which The New York Times noted, "If the Met is consecrated to great vocal artistry, then Barbara Cook belongs [here]," Ms. Cook returns to the more intimate setting of the Café Carlyle where she has enthralled audiences with her "silvery soprano" most every year since 1980. Her program will be comprised of songs she has performed throughout her illustrious career, which includes work on Broadway, numerous recordings and concerts throughout the world. She will be accompanied, for the very first time, by a quartet led by conductor Eric Stern.

Performances begin March 1st and will continue through April 1st. The performance schedule is: Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8:45PM with an additional late show on Saturdays at 10:45PM.

There is a $100 music charge for all shows. Dinner is required for all 8:45PM shows and is served from 6:30PM. Every Monday night (through April 24th) at 8:45PM, Woody Allen appears with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band. There is an $80 music charge. For reservations please call 212-744-1600. For additional information visit www.thecarlyle.com.

Barbara Cook¹s silvery soprano, purity of tone and warm presence has delighted audiences around the world for more than 50 years. In January, Miss Cook achieved a career high when New York¹s Metropolitan Opera Company presented the artist in her Met solo concert debut, making her the first female pop singer to be presented in the company¹s 123 year history. The sold-out concert was recorded and will be released as a live performance CD in April. In November, Miss Cook will return to Carnegie Hall to perform her sixth solo concert. Last spring, Miss Cook made a triumphant return to the Café Carlyle, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the famed nightspot, with her concert titled Tribute. A recording based on the critically acclaimed concert was recently released on DRG records.

Last season Ms. Cook won a NY Drama Critics Circle Award and received a Drama Desk nomination for her latest concert Barbara Cook¹s Broadway. The concert was cited by both the Associated Press and USA TODAY as one of the ten best theatre productions of 2004. She was nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her previous concert, Mostly Sondheim, which she has performed to critical acclaim in New York, London and in major cities throughout the United States.

Barbara Cook made her Broadway debut in 1951 in the musical Flahooley, which was followed by performances as Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel and in Plain and Fancy, before creating the roles of Cunegonde in Candide, Marian the Librarian in The Music Man (Tony Award) and Amalia in She Loves Me! (Drama Desk Award). Her subsequent New York stage appearances include starring roles in the musicals The Gay Life and The Grass Harp, in Muriel Resnick¹s comedy Any Wednesday and in Jules Feiffer¹s Little Murders, in which she created the role of Patsy. At NY¹s City Center she starred in Oklahoma, The King and I and in a second production of Carousel (this time as Julie Jordan) and at Lincoln Center in Showboat and as Sally in the 1985 concert version of Follies.

In 1975 she made a legendary Carnegie Hall debut which was preserved as the live recording, Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall. With her collaborator and musical director, the late Wally Harper, she embarked on a second career as a concert and cabaret artist returning to perform at Carnegie Hall five times (including a 1980 concert which was captured on the recording It¹s Better With A Band and the 2001 debut of Mostly Sondheim, which was released as the live performance CD Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim) and performed in most of the country¹s major concert halls and cabarets. In 1987 she won a Drama Desk Award for her Broadway show, A Concert for the Theatre.

Her numerous London appearances include: her Gala 1997 Birthday Concert with the Royal Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall; appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican; engagements at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, and Sadler¹s Wells; an Olivier Award-nominated appearance at the Albery Theatre and a critically acclaimed Lyric Theatre engagement of Mostly Sondheim, which was nominated for two Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment and Best Actress in a Musical. This past spring Ms. Cook performed Barbara Cook¹s Broadway in the West End¹s Gielgud Theatre, returning in September for an encore engagement of the concert at London¹s Haymarket Theatre.

A Grammy Award winner, her recordings include eight original Broadway cast albums, two Ben Bagley albums of songs by Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, an album entitled Songs of Perfect Propriety, featuring poems by Dorothy Parker set to music by Seymour Barab, As Of Today (Columbia) and The Disney Album (MCA). Her most recent recordings for DRG Records are: Count Your Blessings, Barbara Cook¹s Broadway and Mostly Sondheim. Others include: Close as Pages in a Book, Barbara Cook: Live From London, Oscar Winners: The Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein, All I Ask Of You, and The Champion Season: A Salute to Gower Champion.