(Photo by Dario Acosta, courtesy of UALR Artspree)

Radiant American mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke caused a sensation as Kitty Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, the DVD release of which won the 2012 Grammy Award® for Best Opera Recording. She was praised in The New Yorker for her “fresh, vital portrayal, bringing a luminous tone, a generously supported musical line, a keen sense of verbal nuance, and a flair for seduction.”

Cooke will be in recital today at 3pm at UALR’s Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall to kick off the 2013-2014 Artspree season.  Tickets are $15 for the general public, free to UALR faculty staff and students, and $10 for other students.

During the summer of 2012, Sasha Cooke opened the Hollywood Bowl’s summer season in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Leonard Slatkin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and also appeared at Music@Menlo and the RoundTop Festival. She appeared in the closing concerts of the Aspen Music Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival, with Robert Spano in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and with Louis Langrée in Beethoven’s Mass in C, respectively. Returning to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Sasha performed songs by Bernstein, Copland, Bolcom, Barber and Gershwin in the inaugural concerts of new music director Tugan Sokiev in Berlin and at the Beethovenfest in Bonn. The new season marks her San Francisco Opera debut as the title role in the world premiere of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, as well as her role debuts as Magnolia in Francesca Zambello’s production of Show Boat at Houston Grand Opera and as Sonja in Dominick Argento’s The Aspern Papers at Dallas Opera.

She returns to the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, gives the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Earth Echoes with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, appears with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both in New York and in Mecklenberg, Germany, and sings Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Orchestre de Lyon. She also sings Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony, and Alexander Nevsky with Pinchas Steinberg and the Cleveland Orchestra. She returns to the New York Festival of Song for a program exploring the lives of women, joins the Mirò Quartet for music of Respighi and Schubert with Friends of Chamber Music Denver, and sings Das Lied von der Erde with the Columbus Symphony.