Opera News heralded mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke’s debut album on Yarlung Records and described her onstage “attractive, erotic stage presence.” Writing in Opera News specifically about this recording Eric Myers continues “Chausson’s heartfelt Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer is a magnificently over-the-top work, one that can be hugely effective when performed by a singer of Cooke’s intelligence and restraint. … her voice rides beautifully atop Chausson’s churning Symbolist score.” The New Zealand Herald describes Sasha’s voice as “bewitchingly lustrous.”
Sasha’s concert and opera schedule now takes her all over the world. Sasha won her first GRAMMY® Award for Sony’s DVD release of Doctor Atomic from The Met and her second GRAMMY for The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at Santa Fe Opera. In addition to her performances in the major concert halls and opera houses around the world, Sasha performs regularly with The English Concert conducted by Yarlung’s Special Advisor Harry Bicket.
To capture the luscious sound of Sasha Cooke and Colburn Orchestra in the wonderful acoustics of Zipper Hall at The Colburn School, we built out and doubled the size of the stage to accommodate the number of musicians. We chose two coincident Neumann U-47s for 95% of the sound and two AKG C-12s for a small amount of reinforcement for the percussion and winds. We used microphone preamplifiers made for Yarlung by Elliot Midwood. We summed into two tracks as usual, without using a mixing board, and went directly to Agfa-formula 468 tape.
Lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman
