Live From Lincoln Center will broadcast an expanded edition of its season finale from May, featuring series host Audra McDonald at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. “Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home” is a special gala concert showcasing songs from a wide range of musical theater composers featured on her new album, Go Back Home. This 90-minute edition airs on PBS stations on August 30.
Live From Lincoln Center will broadcast an expanded edition of its season finale from May, featuring series host Audra McDonald taking center stage at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. “Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home” is a special gala concert showcasing five-time Tony Award winner singing songs from a wide range of musical theater composers featured on her highly acclaimed new recording, Go Back Home, released on Nonesuch in May, her first solo album in seven years. The broadcast of this 90-minute edition of “Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home” airs on PBS stations on Friday, August 30, at 10 PM ET (check local listings).
New to this 90-minute cut of “Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home” are songs from the original concert including “My Buddy” by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson, “Moonshine Lullaby” from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, “Stars and the Moon” from Jason Robert’s Songs for a New World, and “Virtue” and “Married Love” by Michael John LaChiusa. These additional songs join works by composers featured on McDonald’s May 9 concert and recently released album Go Back Home, with whom she has long been associated (Guettel, LaChiusa, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Sondheim, among others), and others, including the Kander and Ebb title track, by names that are relatively new to her repertoire. McDonald continues her tradition of championing works by an emerging generation of composers, represented by Adam Gwon, Heisler and Goldrich, and Will Reynolds. Her recent album was produced by Doug Petty, who also produced McDonald’s 2006 release Build a Bridge; musical director Andy Einhorn conducted the ensemble.
Audra McDonald, whose voice Stephen Sondheim has hailed as “one of the glories of the American theater,” is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actress. Born into a musical family, McDonald grew up in Fresno, California, where as a child she began singing in her local community theater (her first audition piece was Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Edelweiss,” which she has recorded for Go Back Home). A year after graduating from The Juilliard School, she won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Carousel. She won two additional Tonys in that category, for Terrence McNally’s play 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, for A Raisin in the Sun, and in 2012 she won her fifth Tony and her first in the leading actress category for her role in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Julie Harris and Angela Lansbury are the only other people to have won five performance Tony Awards).
McDonald also received two Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album for Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny with LA Opera, among other accolades and awards. A familiar face on PBS, McDonald has been featured as performer and headliner on several telecasts, including the recent PBS television special “A Broadway Celebration: In Performance at the White House,” singing at the request of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
To pick up a copy of Go Back Home, head to the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include a download of the complete album at checkout.
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