Howard Crook

Tenor Howard Crook built a distinguished standing among interpreters of Baroque music, with particular strength in the French branch of that repertory, across European stages and ensembles. Numerous recordings documented his work, especially in early opera parts and concert pieces whose demanding upper ranges suited his voice particularly well. Following training at Illinois State University, he launched a professional path focused first on recitals and oratorio engagements. His initial appearance on stage came as Eisenstein in a Cleveland mounting of Die Fledermaus in 1970, hinting at wider dramatic possibilities that led, within ten years, to a solid European career. Alongside Mozart roles and lyric parts such as Pelléas, Crook received invitations from historically informed conductors including Philippe Herreweghe and William Christie, whose Les Arts Florissants stood at the forefront of French Baroque performance. While maintaining an especially comfortable affiliation with that ensemble, he also appeared regularly as soloist in choral scores by Bach, Handel, and Monteverdi. Acclaimed performances in Lully’s Atys and Rameau’s Castor et Pollux took place at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and were later preserved on disc. In 1989 he earned further favorable attention for Atys at the Opéra de Paris and when the same staging reached the Brooklyn Academy of Music. That same year in Toronto he once more sang the Evangelist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, joined Helmuth Rilling for a European tour of Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata Vergine, and took part in a staging of Salieri’s Tarare at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées under Jean-Claude Malgoire. Additional recordings capture him in Bach’s Passions and Mass in B minor, Handel’s Messiah, the Monteverdi Vespers, Jean-Marie Leclair’s 1746 Scylla et Glaucus, Lully’s Alceste, ou Le triomphe d’Alcide, and Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, all with strong colleagues and leading period-instrument directors. Crook served on the faculty of the Paris Conservatory and conducted master classes until his retirement. He died on August 27, 2024.