Audra McDonald Performs Berkshire Solo Concert at The Colonial Theatre, 6/15

Audra McDonald will perform her only Berkshire solo performance on June 15 at 8pm at The Colonial Theatre accompanied by pianist Andy Einhorn.

Tickets to Audra McDonald are $50-$125. Contact the Colonial Ticket Office at 111 South Street, Pittsfield by calling 413-997-4444. Tickets can also be bought online atwww.berkshiretheatregroup.org. The Ticket Office is open Monday-Friday 10am-5pm, Saturdays 10am-2pm or on any performance day from 10am until curtain.

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actress. With five 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 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.

In the summer of 2011, after four seasons playing Dr. Naomi Bennett on ABC's hit television series Private Practice, Audra McDonald turned her attention back to live performances, making her debut as the title character in a sold-out new production of the The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In December the production transferred to the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City, where McDonald was awarded the Tony for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical," placing her in the illustrious company of Broadway legends Julie Harris and Angela Lansbury as the only performers in Tony history to win five acting awards.

Between the runs in Cambridge and New York of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, McDonald embarked on a twenty-city concert tour across North America, presenting her trademark mix of show tunes, classic songs from movies, and pieces written expressly for her by leading contemporary composers. Performing with a wide range of ensembles, from solo piano to full orchestra, tour highlights include season-opening concerts at the KimMel Center in Philadelphia and the Celebrity Series in Boston, as well as performances at Washington, DC's Kennedy Center and New York's Carnegie Hall.

Born into a musical family, McDonald grew up in Fresno, California and received her classical vocal training at the Juilliard School. One year after graduating, she won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater, directed by Nicholas Hytner. 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 play Master Class (1996) and his musical Ragtime (1998), earning her an unprecedented three Tony Awards before turning 30. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony, starring with Sean "Diddy" Combs in A Raisin in the Sun. Her other theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), 110 in the Shade (2007), and, recently, her Public Theater "Shakespeare in the Park" debut in Twelfth Nightalongside Anne Hathaway and Raúl Esparza (2009).

McDonald made her opera debut in 2006 at Houston Grand Opera, which featured her in a double-bill of Poulenc's monodrama La voix humaine and the world premiere of Send, a companion-piece to the Poulenc written by one of her frequent collaborators, composer Michael John LaChiusa. She made her Los Angeles Opera debut in 2007 starring with Patti LuPone in John Doyle's production of Kurt Weill'sRise and Fall of the City of Mahogany. The resulting recording won McDonald two Grammy Awards, for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album.

On the concert stage, she has premiered music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams and sung with virtually every major American orchestra - including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony - and under such conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Leonard Slatkin. 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 is a returning guest at the BBC Proms in London (where she was only the second American in more than 100 years to solo on the famed "Last Night of the Proms" at the Royal Albert Hall) and at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.

It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS program Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years that first introduced McDonald to television audiences as a dramatic actress. She went on to costar with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 Disney/ABC television remake of Annie, and in 2000 she had a recurring role on NBC's hit series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. 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, McDonald returned to network television in 2003 in the political dramaMister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. (The West Wing) and starring Josh Brolin. In early 2006 she joined the cast of the WB'sThe Bedford Diaries, and over the next season she had a recurring role on NBC's television series Kidnapped. In 2008 she reprised her Tony-winning role in A Raisin in the Sun in a made-for-television movie adaption, earning her a second Emmy Award nomination.

A familiar face on PBS, McDonald has headlined telecasts including an American Songbook season opening concert, a presentation of Sondheim's Passion, a tribute concert to Rodgers and Hammerstein titled Something Wonderful, and three galas with the New York Philharmonic: a New Year Eve's performance in 2006, a concert celebrating Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday, and most recently, Carnegie Hall's 120th Anniversary Concert. She was also featured in the PBS television special A Broadway Celebration: In Performance at the White House, singing at the request of President Obama and the First Lady. McDonald has appeared twice on the Kennedy Center Honors, been profiled by 60 Minutes and the Today Show, been a guest on the Megan Mullally Show, the Rosie O'Donnell Show, and Tavis Smiley, and has guest co-hosted on The View with Barbara Walters.

McDonald's film career began with her role in Seven Servants in 1996, and her list of credits has since grown to include The Object of My Affection (1998), Cradle Will Rock (1999), It Runs in the Family (2003), and The Best Thief in the World (2004), and She Got Problems (2009), a mockumentary movie musical written, starring, and directed by her sister, Alison McDonald. Audra McDonald appears in the upcoming film Rampart, starring Woody Harrelson.

As an exclusive Nonesuch recording artist, McDonald has released four 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). On May 21, 2013, McDonald released her first solo record in seven years, Go Back Home. Many of the selections on Go Back Home are by composers with whom McDonald has long been associated (Guettel, LaChiusa, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Sondheim, among others), while some songs, including the Kander and Ebb title track, are by names that are relatively new to her repertoire. In addition, McDonald continues her tradition of championing works by an emerging generation of composers, represented on Go Back Home by Adam Gwon, Heisler and Goldrich, and Will Reynolds. Her first Nonesuch album, 1998's Way Back to Paradise, was named Adult Record of the Year by The New York Times. Following the best-sellingHow Glory Goes in 2000 and Happy Songs in 2002, she released the 2006 albumBuild a Bridge, which saw the singer stretch her repertoire to include songs by the likes of Randy Newman, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Rufus Wainwright, and Nellie McKay. Her ensemble recordings include the acclaimed EMI version of Bernstein's Wonderful Town conducted 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, and 110 in the Shade. She is also featured on a number of audiovisual recordings available on DVD and Blu-ray, including Sondheim! The Birthday Concert, Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, Weill - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Bernstein - Wonderful Town, Audra McDonald - Live at the Donmar, London, and My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies.

McDonald's other accolades include three Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, four NAACP Image Awards nominations, an Ovation Award, and a Theatre World Award. Besides her four Tony wins, she received nominations for her performances in Marie Christine and 110 in the Shade. In addition to her professional obligations, Audra McDonald is an ardent proponent of marriage equality and sits on the advisory board of the advocacy organization Broadway Impact. Of all her many roles, her favorite is that of mother to her daughter, Zoe Madeline.

Audra McDonald is sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. James W. Giddens.

For more information about the performance, please visit our website atwww.BerkshireTheatreGroup.org

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