On Saturday night of October 26, 2013 I had the privileged of attending a musical concert graced by the soprano Audra McDonald at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion held by the Los Angeles Opera. The American songwriter-cum-singer is renowned for her fine execution of art songs as well as opera. She is among the few with the great ability of navigating the passaggio to utter perfection. McDonald is unrivalled when it comes to maintain a single voice from bottom to top. She is also able mix head with chest to live up to the high demand of quality needed of each song she performs. Ms. McDonald can surely sing mezzo or soprano with head and blend middle tones with chest, in addition to belting. Her classical training coupled with versatile voice renders her able to sing any genre she chooses. This is greatly aided by her commanding onstage presence. This is an ability that very few Broadway singers have and many opera singers still have to master.
In my considered opinion, the one-woman cabaret act and concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last month was one of the best performances I have ever experienced. In just under two-hours, Ms. McDonald treated the audience to phenomenal intermission-free set of three songs that can best be described as “standards”. She was kind enough to explain to the audience the meaning of each song to her. We learned that was marking the release of her latest album title “Go Back Home”. It embodied a tale of her new marriage, her experiences of motherhood, fond memories of her late father, the 9/11 event, as well as the civil rights movement.
Ms. McDonald opened her solo performance with a deliciously romantic and entirely obscure piece from the 1959 musical Fiorello, “When Did I Fall in Love” by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. She established her standard rich vocal delivery accompanied with probing emotional reflection from this early stage of her performance. In her signature as a performer, she opened up the narrative behind each song’s text and coaxed the audience into her world with her second song of the night, “Stars in the Moon” by Jason Brown and Alfred Uhry. Her selection of this song particularly fascinated me the most with its theme of enjoying life to the fullest but thoughtfully – fill yourself with life’s riches and resist being misguided by superficiality if you are to have the moon. This number would be followed by Gus Khan-Walter Donaldson’s popular classic, “My Buddy”.
With the help of really sweet vocal harmonizing from her band that consisted of pianist Andy Einhorn, drummer Gene Lewis, and bassist Mark Vanderpoel, Ms. McDonald entertained the audience with “Moonshine Lullaby” from Irving Berlin’s final musical Annie Get Your Gun. Personally, however, I was least entertained by this song because I did not recognize because I never got to hear it in the musical film Annie Get Your Gun.
She would follow this with “Moments in the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim from the album ‘Into the Woods.’ This, as she would reveal, was a special recommendation to her by the song’s composer. Then the beautiful singer flirted coquettishly during her melodious delivery of the vaudeville-flavored number by Jimmy Eaton, “I Double Dare You.” As a dedication to the celebrated duo of John Kander and Fred Ebb and also as her way of making some potent social and political observation, Ms. McDonald chose “Go Back Home” from their final collaboration title “The Scottsboro Boys.” This particular numbered sobered us up with its story of the infamous civil rights injustice transformed into music by the duo. She sung the piece from her album with rather heartfelt expressivity as well as rich tone coloring.
McDonald then gave us the story of love, lose and moving on captured in Adam Gwon’s “I’ll Be Here.” She then would impress with a comical rendition of Zina Goldrich’s number, “Baltimore”, using clever lyrics of Marcy Heisler. The piece is a quick manual on dating that advises ladies to be wary of men. At this moment, Ms. McDonald turned a bit serious with a description of her father’s words of wisdom to her not long before he perished in a fatal airplane crash. She revealed her initial relunctance to play piano onstage until her father called upon her to face her fears. She then would perform, in her father’s memory, Adam Guettel’s “Migratory V.” This was a remarkable expressive piece of delivery that left us feeling much pride, especially her late father whom it felt was looking down upon her.
Her performance of “I Could Have Danced All Night” by Lerner and Loewe would have the audience singing along, allowing the soloist to interpolate her stratospheric high notes when it came to the final cadence. She would further impressive with a persuasive and heart-tugging piece by Julie Styne, “Make Someone Happy.” She then sung the three-piece combo “Cant Stop Talking About Him” under Andy Einhorn’s direction. McDonald then took the audience on some thoughtful journey with her performance of “Make Someone Happy” by Styne, Comden and Green. She would elegantly bring the curtains down with James Baldwin’s poem version of “Some Days” by Steve Marzullo.
Generally, I liked the fact McDonald made sure to meticulously enunciate every letter and word of all the songs she performed that night because they all told a story that needed to be clearly understood. Particularly though, I was most impressed with her vibrancy, humanness, philosophy, fun, movements, and splendid colorful voice that bordered between completely Broadway and completely classical.
