Sasha Cooke’s Recital Hits All the High Notes

As noted in an earlier post, Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke returned to Davies Symphony Hall recently for a program made up entirely of world premieres written by 17 composers during the COVID-19 pandemic, all commissioned by and written specifically for Cooke.

Following the hour-long concert on January 30, composers Matt Boehler, John Glover, Jimmy López Bellido, Nico Muhly, and Frances Pollock, and librettists Kelley Rourke and Todd Boss joined Ms. Cooke on stage for a Roundtable discussion about their process creating these works and the origin of the project.

While much of dialogue focused on the challenges and disruptions caused by the The Pandemic, Ms. Cooke ended the talk by observed that life continues to improve for artists who “learned from the experience.”