Audra McDonald Displays "Brilliance," Effortless Versatility, Says Boston Globe
Audra McDonald returned to the set of Private Practice this week to begin work on the popular ABC series' fourth season. This weekend, she returns to the stage to perform in the Season Benefit concert for the Aspen Music Festival at the Harris Concert Hall in Aspen, Colorado, followed by an intimate dinner on the Benedict Music Tent stage.
Earlier this week, McDonald performed in A Broadway Celebration for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House, an event that will be broadcast October 20 on PBS stations across the United States.
That very special event was preceded by a solo recital from McDonald, with her longtime collaborator Ted Sperling on piano, at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts, last weekend. The Boston Globe's Matthew Guerrieri was there and describes it as quite a memorable event of music from A New American Songbook, from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim to Adam Guettel.
"Musical theater, oscillating between repertory and innovation, demands its performers be polytropic: operetta-like legit sounds, jazz vernacular, pop casualness," Guerrieri writes in his concert review. "The brilliance of Audra McDonald ... is not just her ability to move through those styles, but that one never notices the change of channel."
Guerrieri later compares the singer with one of the composers whose work she performed to such great effect. "As McDonald moved into such deeper emotional territory—a healthy dose of Stephen Sondheim, including a rich, powerful rendition of 'The Glamorous Life'—she completed an effortless turn from dexterity to strength, a turn more impressive for being imperceptibly gradual," he says. "Like Sondheim, McDonald does amazing things by often seeming to do very little at all."
Read the complete concert review at boston.com.
In related news, Lincoln Center's unforgettable concert celebration of Stephen Sondheim on his 80th birthday, at which McDonald sang "The Glamorous Life," will be broadcast on PBS's Great Performances program on November 24.
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