Phenominal!
5
By Currankei
It is almost hard to believe that such a sound is being created by a human being. And, this was all before computerized enhancement and the "laying down of tracks". Ms. Cook sang live here, WITH the orchestra behind and around her, a captured moment in time, a collaborative moment captured like lightning in a bottle and made available to us all. Ms. Cook adds to the phenomena of her vocal prowess an astonishingly precise interpretation of her material, of the stories she is telling, the characters she is playing. This was rare in her day, as was the impeccable level of her taste in music and her respect for the lyric. There's never been anyone like her, and she's STILL going strong, her maturing gifts often matched now with, at long last, the perfect partner, Stephen Sondheim. Together, they are proof that this, this earth, is indeed as much heaven as we'll ever see (so we'd better start taking advantage of it). This early recording of the works of a lesser talent than Sondheim's, but still a gloriously gifted man, provides proof, as well, that Ms. Cook always was who she is. She has, not at all simply, perfected her perfection. Pushed herself beyond the best that she could be, which was and remains the best anyone who does what she does can be. She has grown in ways previously unknown. Forged pathways that others (Audra, I'm talking to you) have wisely followed. Always a dramatic actress using her astonishing and hard won technique in support of a very particular character and story, she has, in the years since this tasty recording, become wise almost beyond experience, and lives as an artist entirely in support of a greater truth, a truth she shares both through performance and through master classes. This truth was unavailable to her previously; unavailable until Sondheim. But, listen to her here, always the familiar oddity, always more of an actress than anyone expected, or sometimes WANTED, her to be, with the most lucious, focused soprano ever heard on Broadway. Frankly, ever heard. Using her own body (and this is going to sound terribly odd) and her own facial structure, the structure of her skull, and the peer of her lungs and diaphram, the use of her nasal passages as echo chambers, her brain pan as an amplifier, she produced a sound almost extraterrestrially unlike any other. Where she places her notes, where in her FACE she places her notes, is a marvel of science and biology. Pair that with her intuitive ability, her inherent ability, to make of phrasing a tool with which to build comprehension, making breathing as important, dramatically, as facial expression, as important as the alteration of sound in the expression of joy or anguish or mischievousness, making, as an essential aspect of her genius, the ability to inhabit most entirely a three dimensional world of shamanic truth. But, even merely biologically, she is a wonder because she, more than even Callas, makes of herself, her body, a literal instrument. She "plays" herself, as one would a trumpet or clarinet. Listening to her early recordings is a surprisingly complex but delightful pastime, lifted up and held tight by the sheer unearthliness of her sound, you understand the human condition just ghat much more. Your comprehension had been expanded, your godless soul made almost willing to accept the concept of intelligent design, if only because how ELSE could this woman have possibly happened? So, buy this god damned album and then buy her last three or fourteen recordings, her most recent being the Sondheim Broadway review which ran just last year and for which she contributed the most haunting "Send In The Clowns" and "Not A Day Goes By" as will ever be recorded. I don't know how old she was or how old she is, I know only that she is, she was, and, if we're lucky, she will be. And, we are very lucky.
