Sasha Cooke: how do I find you
Pentatone

The title of this remarkable collection of songs commissioned and curated by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke shouldn't be taken literally, of course. It's intended to be a heartfelt enquiry into another's condition in all its emotional, psychological, and physical facets. As the material was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, it's only natural that many of the seventeen pieces would address directly, sometimes wryly and with dark humour, myriad challenges associated with this incredible time. To create the project, the Grammy Award-winning Cooke invited the composers and their lyricist partners to create material informed by their pandemic-related experiences, and they responded with pieces about overwhelmed parents, Zoom-challenged employees, racial injustice, and school shootings. Adding to the recording's appeal, the songs encompass a sweeping tonal range, from lyrical art songs to irreverent commentaries.

Though Cooke regularly performs with orchestras, opera companies, and chamber ensembles, she's accompanied by pianist Kirill Kuzmin only on the seventy-minute, digital-only release; however, the recording never feels wanting when her lustrous voice and the songs are so bewitching. The precision and poise of her delivery impress throughout, and many moments arise when her singing is so captivating all else falls by the wayside. Just as the composers devised ways to honour the lyricists' words with their music, Cooke and Kuzmin honour both by responding with authentic performances attuned to the songs' meanings. Material by some of today's most acclaimed young composers appears, with Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, and Christopher Cerrone among those taking part. Interestingly, Cooke had only collaborated with Muhly before, as she performed as the titular character in his 2017 opera Marnie.

She smartly begins the collection with Shaw's gorgeous title song, a heartfelt expression marked by an entrancing hymnal character and clever rhyming sequences (“How do I find you? When do I blind you? Do I remind you, bind or confine you, …”). If there's a downside to starting an album so powerfully, it's that it sets a dauntingly high bar for what follows; in this case, however, many another song rises to the challenge, including the one immediately after, Kamala Sankaram's poignant “Listen,” whose text by Mark Campbell was written in May 2020 in the wake of George Floyd's death. Using a poem by John K. Samson for lyrics, Cerrone also contributes a stirring art song in his affecting “Everything Will Be Okay.” Of all the songs on the album, ones such as these have the greatest chance of enduring.

Some find inspiration in surprising places. In “Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair,” composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek pay homage to Rembrandt and the general idea of the self-portrait as a distillation of the artist's legacy. Huang Ruo's “The Work of Angels” indirectly references anti-Asian hate that arose with the pandemic by using a 1978 poem by David Henry Hwang referencing the words written on the walls of the detention centre on Angel Island by Chinese immigrants hoping to gain entry into the United States. For John Glover's delicate “Spider,” lyricist Kelley Rourke conveys sincere appreciation for the insect's methodical and exacting creation of lines onto which she steps. In "That Night,” the longing Hilary Purrington and lyricist Mark Campbell express for a night in New York will resonate with anyone who's experienced the city in all its madcap beauty.

The discombobulating madness of pandemic parenting and "like"-obsessed social media is dealt with in Rene Orth's “Dear Colleagues” (words by Colleen Murphy) and Frances Pollock's “#MasksUsedToBeFun” (lyrics by Emily Roller), respectively. Joel Thompson and lyricist Gene Scheer vividly address parenting anxiety of a more harrowing sort when a shooter appears at a daughter's school in “Still Waiting.” Some songs, such as Matt Boehler's “Risk Not One” and Andrew Marshall's “(A Bad Case of) Kids” (lyrics by Todd Boss in both), are theatrical; Gabriel Kahane's moving “The Hazelnut Tree,” on the other hand, is gentle and Jimmy López Bellido's “Where Once We Sang” (words by Mark Campbell) hopeful.

February 2022