Barbara Cook returns to Carnegie Hall for a Feb. 2 concert of work by Stephen Sondheim, and the sound will echo in a live album from DRG Records in March.

Hugh Fordin, the 2001 Grammy Award-nominated producer of cast albums for The Music Man and Kiss Me, Kate, will produce the disc of theatre soprano Cook's concert, at the hall where her previous solo efforts drew raves.

Cook's two previous Carnegie Hall concert albums are favorites among her fans. The onetime Broadway star of Candide, The Music Man and She Loves Me will sing with a quintet musical-directed by Wally Harper. Actor-singer Malcolm Gets ("Caroline in the City," A New Brain) will join her. Gets himself gets a solo DRG disc in May.

The program is expected to be laced with songs by Sondheim, expanding on Cook's new act that played Feinstein's at the Regency in fall 2000 and was later refined for performances at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, Dec. 29 31, 2000.

The DRG Cook concert disc will be on store shelves by March 27. Producer Fordin has helmed several Cook discs in recent years. The 73-year-old Cook is earning raves for her mellow performances and her still-healthy soprano. Her recent performances included songs by Stephen Sondheim, but other works as well, drawing on a list of songs Sondheim said he wished he wrote (included "Hard-Hearted Hannah, the Vamp From Savannah, "Waiting on the Robert E. Lee," "San Francisco" and "The Trolley Song."

Limited seats are available for Cook's 8 PM Feb. 2 Carnegie Hall concert. For information, call (212) 247-7800.

To see the fall 2000 Playbill On-Line Brief Encounter interview with Barbara Cook, click here.

— By Kenneth Jones