Sasha Cooke

The fast-rising mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has been acclaimed for her opera performances, as soloist with orchestra, as well as in song recitals. Her 2009/10 season includes concerts at the Lied Center of Kansas, for the Marilyn Horne Foundation (NY), at SummerFest in La Jolla (CA), at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with the New York Festival of Song and at the Cosmos Club in Washington DC, and her débuts with the Symphony Orchestras of Milwaukee, Colorado, Seattle, Modesto, Kansas City, San Diego, Chicago and with the Aspen Festival Orchestra under the direction of David Zinman.

This season she sings the role of Meg in Falstaff with the Seattle Opera, the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe with the San Francisco Symphony and conductor George Manahan. Last season, Cooke sang the role of Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera première of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, which she later performed with English National Opera in her European début. She sang Handel’s Messiah with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall and Bernstein’s Opening Prayer with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop. Cooke was presented by Young Concert Artists at Lincoln Center in Berlioz Les nuits d’été with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under Giancarlo Guerrero. Cooke sang the role of Olga in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv and participated in the 2008 Marlboro Chamber Music Festival in Vermont.

As a winner of the 2007 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Cooke holds the Lindemann Vocal Chair of YCA. Later that year, she gave two début recitals in the Young Concert Artists Series at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater and at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

Sasha Cooke performed with the Wolf Trap Opera Company in summer 2007, with the National Symphony Orchestra as Mercedes in a concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen, and as Aloes in Chabrier’s L’étoile. Other recent notable appearances have included the premières of Bastianello by John Musto and William Bolcom’s Lucrezia with the New York Festival of Song, a recital at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, a performance at the Bard Music Festival, Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer at the Miller Theater, for the Marilyn Horne Foundation’s 2007 Gala at Zankel Hall, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Mozart Academy of San Luis Obispo, and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra (TX). Ms. Cooke appeared as the Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Endimione in Cavalli’s La Calisto at The Juilliard School, Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther and Dorabella in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Rice University, and Erika in Barber’s Vanessa with Central City Opera.

Cooke won First Prizes in the 2007 Sun Valley Opera Vocal Competition and the 2006 Bach Vocal Competition sponsored by the American Bach Society and The Bach Choir of Bethlehem. Sasha Cooke received her Bachelor’s Degree from Rice University and her Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School, where she was frequently heard in premières by the New Juilliard Ensemble. She has also attended Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute, and Central City Opera’s Young Artist Training Program. She is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program of the Metropolitan Opera.