Audra McDonald performs tonight, April 29, 2015 in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage.
She will be joined by music director and pianist Andy Einhorn, bassist Mark Vanderpoel, and drummer Gene Lewin.
Tickets, priced $45 to $120, are available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, 154 West 57th Street, or can be charged to major credit cards by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or by visiting the Carnegie Hall website, carnegiehall.org.
McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actress. With a record six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and a long list of other accolades to her name, she is among today's most highly regarded performers. Blessed with a luminous soprano and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth telling, she is equally at home on Broadway and opera stages as she is in roles on film and television. In addition to her theatrical work, she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world.
Born into a musical family, Ms. McDonald grew up in Fresno, California, and received her classical vocal training at The Juilliard School. A year after graduating, she won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Carouselat
Lincoln Center Theater. She received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category over the next four years for her performances in the Broadway premieres of
Terrence McNally's Master Class (1996) and his musical Ragtime (1998), earning her an unprecedented three Tony Awards before the age of 30. In 2004, she won her fourth Tony, starring alongside Sean "Diddy" Combs inA Raisin in the Sun, and in 2012 she won her fifth--and her first in the leading actress category--for her role in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. In 2014, she made Broadway history and became the Tony Awards' most decorated performer when she won her sixth award for her portrayal of
Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. In addition to setting the record for most competitive wins by an actor, she also became the first person to receive awards in all four acting categories. Ms. McDonald's other theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999),Henry IV (2004), 110 in the Shade (2007), and her Shakespeare in the Park debut in Twelfth Night (2009).
Besides her six Tony wins, Ms. McDonald has received nominations for her performances in Marie Christine and 110 in the Shade. Her other accolades include five Drama Desk Awards, five Outer Critics Circle Awards, four NAACP Image Award nominations, an Ovation Award, a Theatre World Award, and the Drama League's 2000 Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre and 2012 Distinguished Performance awards. In 2013, she was namedMusical America's Musician of the Year.
Ms. McDonald made her opera debut in 2006 at
Houston Grand Opera, where she starred in a double bill: Poulenc's monodrama La voix humaine and the world premiere of its companion piece, Send, written by one of Ms. McDonald's frequent collaborators,
Michael John LaChiusa. She made her
Los Angeles Opera debut in 2007, starring alongside
Patti LuPone in
John Doyle's production of
Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The resulting recording won Ms. McDonald two Grammy Awards, one for Best Opera Recording and another for Best Classical Album.
On
the concert stage, Ms. McDonald has premiered music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
John Adams and sung with virtually every major American orchestra. She made her
Carnegie Hall debut in 1998 with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of
Michael Tilson Thomas in a season-opening concert that was broadcast live on PBS. Internationally, she returns to the BBC Proms in London--where she was only the second American in more than 100 years invited to appear as a guest soloist at the Last Night of the Proms--and to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, as well as to the London Symphony Orchestra and Berliner Philharmoniker.
It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS program Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years that first introduced Ms. McDonald to television audiences as a dramatic actress. After receiving her first Emmy nomination for her performance in the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, directed by
Mike Nichols and starring
Emma Thompson, Ms. McDonald returned to network television in 2003 in the political drama Mister Sterling. In 2008, she reprised her Tony-winning role in A Raisin in the Sun in a made-for-television movie adaptation, earning her a second Emmy nomination. From 2007 to 2011, she played Dr. Naomi Bennett on the hit ABC medical drama Private Practice. In 2013, her critically acclaimed performance as the Mother Abbess in NBC's live telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music was watched by an estimated 18.5 million people across the US.
As an exclusive Nonesuch recording artist, Ms. McDonald released her most recent album, Go Back Home, in 2013, marking her first solo disc in seven years. She has released four previous solo albums on the label, interpreting songs from the classic (Gershwin, Arlen, and Bernstein) to the contemporary (
Michael John LaChiusa,
Adam Guettel, and
Ricky Ian Gordon). Her ensemble recordings include the acclaimed EMI version of Bernstein's Wonderful Townconducted by
Sir Simon Rattle, the
New York Philharmonic release of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, and Dreamgirls in concert, as well as the first recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro and Broadway cast albums of Carousel, Ragtime, Marie Christine, 110 in the Shade, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill.
In addition to her professional obligations, Ms. McDonald is an ardent proponent of marriage equality. She sits on the advisory board of the advocacy organization Broadway Impact and has been featured in campaigns for Freedom to Marry, NOH8, and PFLAG NYC. A dog lover, she has two canine companions that she adopted from Eleventh Hour Rescue, a volunteer-based, non-profit organization that saves dogs from death row. In 2014, she joined the Covenant House International Board of Directors, which oversees programs for homeless youth in 27 cities in six countries across the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
Of all her many roles, her favorites are the ones performed offstage: wife to her husband, actor
Will Swenson, and mother to her daughter, Zoe Madeline.
