Audra McDonald helped Carnegie Hall celebrate its 120th birthday as part of an all-star gala benefit concert with the New York Philharmonic earlier this month. McDonald performs songs by Duke Ellington; also on the program are works by Beethoven, Dvořák, and Gershwin. The Carnegie Hall 120th Anniversary Gala Concert will be broadcast on PBS tonight as part of WNET’s Great Performances. New York classical radio station 105.9 FM WQXR will also broadcast the concert.

Audra McDonald helps Carnegie Hall celebrate its 120th birthday as part of an all-star gala benefit concert tonight featuring the New York Philharmonic, performing songs by Duke Ellington. Pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Gil Shaham, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma join the Philharmonic as guest soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, and the orchestra performs Dvorák’s Carnival Overture and Gershwin’s An American in Paris. The concert will air on PBS’s Great Performances on May 31.

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) has announced that Audra McDonald has been cast to play Bess in the A.R.T.'s new production of Porgy and Bess. Also in the cast are Norm Lewis as Porgy and David Alan Grier as Sportin' Life. Performances will begin August 17 at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. McDonald will join Liev Schreiber to announce the nominations for the 56th Annual Drama Desk Awards on May 2.

Audra McDonald performs in the Aspen Music Festival's Season Benefit this weekend. Her performance at The White House's A Broadway Celebration airs October 20 on PBS; she'll be on PBS again November 24, when Great Performances airs Lincoln Center's Stephen Sondheim: The Birthday Concert. "The brilliance of Audra McDonald," says the Boston Globe in a review or her recent Tangelwood recital, "is not just her ability to move through" the many styles comprising musical theater, "but that one never notices the change of channel."

Audra McDonald follows her stellar Tanglewood performance with a trip to Washington, DC, to perform at A Broadway Celebration, hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House, tonight. Tune in to a live web stream of tonight's event starting at 7 PM EDT on whitehouse.gov. The show will be broadcast on PBS stations across the US starting October 20.

Audra McDonald begins performances of 110 in the Shade at the Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah, tonight. She reprises her Tony-nominated role in the play for a special limited engagement, through July 10, to benefit the nonprofit Hale Center Foundation for the Arts and Education. McDonald recently appeared on the PBS special America's Orchestra: Celebrating 125 Years of the Boston Pops and makes her Tanglewood debut in July.

Audra McDonald performed with the San Francisco Symphony Monday night and brought out "one gem-like number after the next," says the San Jose Mercury News, which describes her voice as "Full and mellow, elegant and sexy, lush, plush, brassy, growling, howling across her gigantic range, or expressing starry-eyed enchantment." This summer, she will reprise her role in 110 in the Shade, for a limited run in Utah; make her Tanglewood debut; and perform at Aspen and at the Ravinia Festival's Sondheim celebration.

Oumou Sangare and Audra McDonald have been nominated for NAACP Image Awards: Oumou for her latest album, Seya, and Audra for her work on the ABC series Private Practice. Audra will be performing on ABC tonight, singing "God Bless America" during the pregame show at the National Championship football game in Pasadena's Rose Bowl Stadium.

Audra McDonald was recently honored with the 2009 NAACP Theatre Award's Trailblazer Award. Next month, Audra will participate in The Actors Fund's fall 2009 benefit concert titled Chance and Chemistry: A Centennial Celebration of Frank Loesser, to be held on Monday, October 26, at the Minskoff Theater in New York.

Audra McDonald returns to the stage in this summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night. Audra, a four-time Tony winner, is making her Public Theater debut in the role of Olivia, joining a stellar cast that includes Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway, who stars as Viola, and Raúl Esparza, star of the 2007 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company. The show, directed by Daniel Sullivan, will run June 10–July 12 at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central Park.

Audra McDonald will be among Broadway's finest at New York's Roseland Ballroom tonight for the Roundabout Theatre Company's Spring Gala, Take Me Back to Manhattan, a one-night-only celebration of the New York's big-band era. The performance, which benefits the Roundabout's Musical Theatre Fund, features music by Rodgers, Porter, Arlen, Berlin, Ellington, and Gershwin. Tonight's event will be hosted by Nathan Lane and is also scheduled to include performances by Michael Cerveris, Kelli O'Hara, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Mario Cantone, Jane Krakowski, Cynthia Nixon, Denis O'Hare, Martha Plimpton.

Toumani Diabaté’s The Mandé Variations has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding World Music Album. Audra McDonald was nominated for two acting awards, for her work on the TV series Private Practice and on the TV movie A Raisin in the Sun. President-elect Barack Obama, the subject of many of the works in the Image Awards' literature categories, chose Kulanjan, Diabaté's 1999 collaboration with Taj Mahal, as the only CD on his Borders Shortlist recommending five things to read, watch, and listen to.