Barbara Cook

So how come Barbara Cook doesn't act her age? Closing in on her 80th birthday (this Thursday), she scats and shimmies on a stage as if the clock had no claim on her.
"I'm as giddy as a baby on a swing," she sings near the start of "Barbara Cook's Spotlight," the dizzyingly enthralling cabaret act she performed over the weekend in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. The lyric is from "It Might as Well Be Spring," a silky ballad Rodgers and Hammerstein spliced into "State Fair." And you know, when Cook is out there, soaking us all in a warm downpour of melody, it absolutely might as well be.
Singing an eclectic program Friday night that veered from Duke Ellington to Irving Berlin to her beloved Stephen Sondheim, Cook christened a series she is curating for the Kennedy Center that will, in the coming months, feature cabaret performances by Judy Kuhn, Lillias White, Brent Barrett, Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner, among others.
Like Cook, they're all Broadway-seasoned actors. It's clear she believes the ability to fully convey the story that each songwriter wants to tell is an essential tool for a great singer. Speaking on this topic in the Terrace, Cook invoked her old pal Sondheim and provided some insight into why she has become a pivotal figure in the interpretation of his work.
"He writes songs that are so actable," she said, before wading into a poignant rendition of "No One Is Alone" from Sondheim's "Into the Woods."
To Cook, emotional pitch must be as vitally projected as the notes, a task she seems to approach with both the tempered steel of an older artist and the humility of a young fan. Few stylists these days shape the contours of their personalities to words and music as successfully as she. When she wraps her rich and uncannily ageless sound around the pain-wracked voluptuousness of "I Wish I Could Forget You," from Sondheim and James Lapine's underrated "Passion," you feel as if she herself bears the scars of the character, the damaged, obsessive Fosca.
She sang the 90-minute show without a break (one sip of water was the sum total of her rest period), using what she said was a lot of material from a concert she did not long ago at Carnegie Hall. The loose connective thread was Sondheim and composers and lyricists he admired (Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern) or who were his mentors (Oscar Hammerstein II).
Her opening moment was redolent of old Broadway: From offstage, you heard the strains of "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " -- a homage to Rodgers and Hammerstein and a direct echo of the way the song was handled in the first scene of "Oklahoma!" on Broadway 64 years ago.
She's a champion of the Broadway tunesmith; the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart find expected places on her cabaret honor roll. But she also celebrates a novelty singer such as Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. When she was growing up in Atlanta, he was a guest star with a burlesque troupe for which she was a teenage singer. Her version of Edwards's "My Dog Loves Your Dog" was a sweet reminder of those provincial roots.
Her accompaniment over the weekend consisted of pianist Lee Musiker, bassist Peter Donovan and drummer James Saporito. This suave combo helped to make the evening swing, although it must be said that some of the arrangements could have been more carefully modulated to Cook's lower register; when this woman is on a stage, you don't want to miss a note.
Speaking of missing something: In light of the fact that Cook is one of the important living interpreters of American songwriting -- and still doing it with vigor -- what in heaven's name are the Kennedy Center Honors waiting for?