The vivacious soprano Leah Hawkins drops in on the Park Avenue Armory with a song list of folk material going back to American, Yiddish, Jamaican, Swahili, and other zesty traditions. That’s quite a statement from a young artist whose training was all about catching the brass ring in the often snooty world of opera. Still in her early 30s, Hawkins has copped both the Marian Anderson Award (bestowed annually by the Washington National Opera and the Kennedy Center) as well as the Beverly Sills Artist Award (from the Metropolitan Opera). Anderson and Sills! Now, there’s a pair of fairy godmothers to conjure with! Hawkins’s repertoire, be it said, is very different from theirs: roles that figure large for Hawkins though not for Anderson (a contralto) or Sills (a coloratura soprano) are the flamboyant soprano solo in Verdi’s Requiem, the heroines of Tosca and Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as the pivotal dual role of Louise and Betty in the Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. The recital at the Armory takes Hawkins way off the beaten path—an irresistible prospect. She’s one of those personalities who never shines brighter than when she drops the masks and plays herself. —Matthew Gurewitsch