The range of moods and temperaments on How Do I Find You deserved more variety ★★★☆☆

The American mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke was also at home in 2020. She got tired of sitting on the couch and asked a series of American composers to write new work for mezzo-soprano and piano, to a text of her choice. Cooke bundles the seventeen compositions that returned on the album How Do I Find You.

Not the least contributed. Grammy winner Missy Mazzoli was inspired by a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Nico Muhly, a famous border crossing between classical and pop, wrote notes to a moralistic 17th-century poem. Many a song is close to film scores and musicals, but the Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo deviates pleasantly from the average. In The Work of Angels, about a 19th-century quarantine island, pianist Kirill Kuzmin can finally get rid of some stiffer sounds. Sasha Cooke sings intelligibly and carefully, but the range of moods and temperaments deserved more variation.