Barbara Cook Has More to Sing About These Days

Twenty years ago, even the ardent fans of American musical theater were ready to place the R.I.P. plaque on the once-noble species. Camelot had ended with John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the sound of musicals no longer resounded on Broadway.

In more recent years, however, classic musicals have enjoyed revivals in various guises. Opera companies such as Los Angeles Music Center Opera and New York City Opera have included lavish productions of musicals in their seasons, and a spate of crossover recordings has offered a second look at works from “Showboat” and “Carousel” to “West Side Story.”

Singer Barbara Cook’s career has paralleled the renewal of interest in this American tradition. Cook’s one-woman Broadway show, “A Concert for the Theatre,” won the 1987 Drama Desk Award, only a year after she had won over London audiences with the same stylish material. Accompanied by her longtime musical director, Wally Harper, Cook will open a three-night stint at the Lyceum Stage at 8 p.m. Thursday.

Some refer to Cook as a cult singer, but she is uncomfortable with that designation.

“I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘cult singer,’ even if they describe me as one. I think it’s just one those overused phrases like living legend ,” she said, laughing.

Legend or not, Cook’s connection with Broadway’s heyday is authentic. After her 1951 Broadway debut in the now forgotten “Flahooley,” she made her name in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” and Jerry Bock’s “She Loves Me.” In Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man,” Cook won a Tony Award for best actress as Marian the Librarian.

However, the days of the red-blooded American musical after “The Music Man” were indeed numbered. In spite of the occasional sophisticated new musical such as Cy Coleman’s “City of Angels,” Cook’s type of old-fashioned musical with gorgeous tunes and uplifting story line is no longer being written.

“Today, it’s really much harder to write for the musical stage,” she said. “Audience expectations make it harder--or at least less likely--for a character to break into song, to have a reason to sing. I think today’s audiences demand more reality.”

Cook related her favorite story about this attitude, expressed tersely by a gentleman she overheard in a party of senior citizens clustered in front of a New York theater trying to decide which performance to select.

“No, I don’t want to go to a musical,” he protested. “When people should talk, they talk!”

Cook suggested that the new wave of British musical theater, the likes of “Phantom of the Opera” and “Miss Saigon,” has circumvented this objection by setting the entire piece to music. By adopting the conventions of opera, the authors avoid changing gears from dialogue to song.

Whatever the dramatic convention, Cook holds to one overriding aspiration.

“I want to see a show that makes me cry and laugh, one where I really care about what happens to the people.”

Most critics would apply that criterion to Cook’s singing and to her insightful interpretation of the songs she selects. In addition to her Broadway favorites, Cook’s San Diego collection will show other facets of her musical curiosity.

“I haven’t chosen the entire San Diego program yet,” she said early last week. “We’ll dip into the grab bag, and it will be an oleo of things: Irving Berlin, maybe some Gershwin, some John Williams, and a piece by Paul Simon called “St. Judy’s Comet.”

Persistent Pianist. La Jolla High School sophomore Hiroko Kunitake may not rate piano practice as one of her favorite chores, but the energetic 15-year-old applied herself sufficiently to win the San Diego Symphony’s Young Artist Competition last month. As part of her prize, she will perform with the orchestra three days in the near future: Wednesday and Thursday for the midday young people’s concerts and at 2 p.m. Sunday for the final presentation of this season’s family concerts.

Under guest conductor Murry Sidlin, she will play the third movement of Edvard Grieg’s A Minor Piano Concerto, one of the two pieces that helped her win the competition.

“My teacher (Jane Bastien) wanted me to play some Mendelssohn Concerto,” Kunitake said, “but I had already decided that I wanted to play the Grieg.”

According to the young performer’s mother, Taka Kunitake, compromise has never characterized her daughter’s approach to music.

“When she was only 3 1/2 years old, she would ask me every day, ‘Where is my piano lesson?’ ”

By the time Hiroko was 4, the Kunitakes were able to locate a teacher for their eager daughter, not an easy task in Beaver, Tex., where they lived at the time. Since the family has lived in the San Diego area, Hiroko has grown accustomed to performing in public. At age 10 she made her concert debut with the San Diego County Symphony in a Haydn Piano Concerto, and in June, 1988, she played Mozart’s A Major Concert, K. 488, with the La Jolla Civic-University Orchestra.

Though the young musician is not one to vacillate, she is still not certain she wants to pursue music as a career.

“I’m also interested in medicine,” she said. “I like the idea of saving people’s lives.”

Maestra in North County. JoAnn Falletta brings her Long Beach Symphony to Fallbrook’s Bowers Auditorium at 4:30 p.m. April 1 under the auspices of the Fallbrook Music Society. The brilliant young American conductor, who made the San Diego Chamber Orchestra soar earlier this season, will conduct Respighi’s “Roman Festival,” Ellen Taafe Zwilich’s Concerto Grosso and the Beethoven Violin Concerto with soloist Kathlene Lenski.

Singing for fun and profit. The local chapter of the National Assn. of Teachers of Singing will hold a daylong singers symposium Saturday at San Diego City College. Specialists in everything from opera staging and lieder interpretation to singing and arranging for popular vocal artists will be on hand to share their expertise. Students at all levels of voice study may enroll. For more information and to make a luncheon reservation, phone Robert Austin at 225-0432.