Born: 25 October 1927, United States
Died: 8 August 2017
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
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Barbara Cook (October 25, 1927, Atlanta, Georgia – August 8, 2017, Manhattan, New York) was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings. During her years as Broadway’s leading ingénue, Cook was lauded for her excellent lyric soprano voice. Cook starred in an acclaimed 1960 City Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I and in the short-lived 1961 musical The Gay Life. In 1963, she created the role of Amalia Balash in the classic Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me. Her collaboration with composer and pianist Wally Harper as a concert singer started in 1975 and continued to Harper’s death in 2004. Cook was widely recognized as one of the “premier interpreters” of musical theatre songs and standards, in particular the songs of composer Stephen Sondheim. In 1998, Cook was nominated for an Olivier Award “The Observer Award for Outstanding Achievement” for her one-woman show, accompanied by Harper, at London’s Donmar Warehouse and the Albery Theatre. She won the Drama Desk Award “Outstanding One Person Show” in 1987 for her Broadway show A Concert for the Theatre, again with Harper. In 1994 Cook was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. In 2011 she was named an honoree at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.