Sasha Cooke - Artist Bio

During the 2019/20 season, two-time Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke returns to the San Francisco Opera to reprise the title role in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and Laurene Jobs in Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. On the concert stage, she reunites with Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic for concerts of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” at David Geffen Hall, Barbican Centre and The Royal Concertgebouw. She also sings Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Myung-whun Chung at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano in Atlanta and at Carnegie Hall; Ravel’s Shéhérazade with Radio Filharmonisch Orkest under conductor James Gaffigan; Rilke Songs with composer and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with The Cleveland Orchestra and a concert version of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti.

After a decade of collaborating with the San Francisco Symphony, she undertakes an artist-in-residency that encompasses concerts with the orchestra, educational events and a solo recital in Davies Hall.

Additional recitals include Ms. Cooke’s return to London’s Wigmore Hall with pianist Malcolm Martineau and the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater with pianist Julius Drake, as well as a solo recital for Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival with pianist Pei-Yao Wang. She also sings the world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Violins of Hope with violinist Daniel Hope for Music at Kohl Mansion in California.

Ms. Cooke has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with more than 60 symphony orchestras worldwide under leading conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gustavo Dudamel, Franz Welser-Möst, Sir Andrew Davis, Bernard Haitink, James Levine and Edo de Waart. Her recordings can be found on Hyperion, BIS, Chandos, and more. Most recently, she appears on five new recordings including Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ with Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony, Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs which won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra, Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, and Sasha Cooke LIVE, a collection of her performances from Music@Menlo. She studied at Rice University, The Juilliard School and the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.