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 role 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 transfered to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway, where McDonald was awarded the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. 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.

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"Absolutely thrilling. That describes Audra McDonald’s Avery Fisher Hall performance at Lincoln Center’s spring gala on Thursday evening. The very sound of the word 'thrilling,' with its suggestion of an embedded trill, evokes qualities inherent in Ms. McDonald’s soprano, which seemed to unfurl in ever-richer textures as she imbued songs with a sense of bursting possibility...One of Ms. McDonald’s greatest gifts is to find the story inside the song and deliver it with immediacy and clarity, in a voice that finds a flexible, intuitive balance between storytelling and singing — a defining voice of our time. "

Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"For devastating theatrical impact, it’s hard to imagine any hurricane matching the tempest that is the extraordinary Audra McDonald’s Bess at the moment she is reunited with her former lover, Crown... Bess—who has already been drawn by Ms. McDonald as a compellingly conflicted soul — acquires the full dimensions of a tragic heroine. Ms. McDonald, for the record, never recedes from those heights. Her Bess, which I first saw in this production’s original staging in Cambridge in August, remains a major work of musical portraiture, one that realizes the ambition of Ms. Paulus and company to bring fresh psychological complexity and visceral immediacy to a classic. Ms. McDonald’s Bess is — in a word — great... It seems safe to predict that Ms. McDonald, a four-time Tony winner, will be in contention for all the prizes on offer this season. She should be. You don’t need the scar that brands her cheek to tell this Bess is damaged goods (and all too aware of that status) and a woman who has always lived in defiance of the pain she is in. That’s evident in her very posture, a mix of coiled defensiveness and thrusting exhibitionism, from the moment she sets foot onstage. And when she sings — ah, it’s a God-touched voice that turns suffering and ugliness into beauty. No wonder the people of Catfish Row don’t think she belongs among them. This Bess has the breath of divinity in a world that feels entirely too mundane to keep her. "

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"There is a reason you should run out and get the recording of this Tony-nominated revival: It preserves Audra McDonald's wrenching performance… Best to treasure this ‘Porgy and Bess’ for McDonald's heartbreaking portrayal of a woman who loves her Porgy as well as she can. The beauty and tragedy of this are captured in this recording of a landmark performance by a Broadway legend who, thankfully, is just entering her prime."

Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

"McDonald is one of the most consummate performers there is, effortlessly intimate, casually masterly, seemingly more comfortable on stage than most people are anywhere… McDonald can belt with the best of them (Harburg and Arlen’s ‘Ain’t It de Truth’ rang with attitude), but the core of her sound (and the reserve of her vocal power) is a more classical technique, the traditional, legit music theater style, sustained notes that blossom into complexity more than accelerate toward impact… McDonald, more and more, seems most at home in the suspended equilibrium so well cultivated by Broadway in its golden age, lightly dancing along the line separating a joyous heart from a broken one."

Matthew Guerrieri, The Boston Globe

"In Audra McDonald, this production boasts a Bess for the ages. With a scar across her left cheek and a wary, wounded demeanor to match, McDonald’s Bess emerges very slowly from her shell, drawn out into the world by the unconditional love of Porgy (Norm Lewis), a disabled beggar. Their duet on ‘Bess, You Is My Woman Now’ near the end of act one is a thing of beauty to watch and to hear: Lewis eases into it gently and tentatively, as if not entirely sure Bess will reciprocate, while the subtle play of expressions on McDonald’s face suggests that, mid-song, the realization has dawned on Bess that she does indeed love Porgy. Later, when Bess pleads with Porgy not to let her former lover, Crown, take her away again in ‘I Loves You, Porgy,’ McDonald brings a shattering, life-or-death urgency to the scene."

Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe

"She never sings these particular lyrics, as it happens. But Audra McDonald has every right to say, ‘Bess, you is my woman now.’ That assertion is implicit in every aspect of her performance in ‘The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess’… Ms. McDonald is Bess (or to use the hyper-speak of movie ads, ‘Audra McDonald IS Bess,’) and she can claim rights to full possession of her role, the kind of ownership that transforms a classic character forever. … Ms. McDonald’s performance is as complete and complex a work of musical portraiture as any I’ve seen in years, fulfilling the best intentions of Ms. Paulus and Ms. Parks. A four-time Tony winner for her work in both musicals and plays, Ms. McDonald combines the skills of a great actress and a great singer to stride right over any perceived gaps between the genres of musical and opera. Though her emotion-packed soprano has rarely been more penetrating or (dare I add?) operatic, Ms. McDonald makes you forget whether she’s speaking or singing the words of the loose-living, terminally conflicted Bess, who improbably but persuasively falls in love with the crippled beggar Porgy…You just know that you feel what she’s feeling at any given moment, and that it is often unbearably painful. … Her scarred, shapely Bess is a heartbreaking mélange of audacity and trepidation. She is like a feral cat who has known years of abuse and is now frightened but tempted by the prospect of a real home. She brings out the best in her leading men… And she made me understand ‘Porgy and Bess’ in a way I hadn’t before. So many of its lyrics have to do with love and home and life itself as provisional and fleeting. And the uncertainty on Ms. McDonald’s face and the fear that pulses in her voice register the toll of such profound impermanence. This ‘Porgy and Bess,’ which is scheduled to open on Broadway this winter, could be a genuine astonishment if everyone were on Ms. McDonald’s level."

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"McDonald can do most anything, from the tongue-twisting patter of Frank Loesser’s ‘Can’t Stop Talking’ (a Betty Hutton specialty), to a turn at the piano, accompanying herself on Adam Guettel’s ‘Migratory V’…As McDonald moved into such deeper emotional territory — a healthy dose of Stephen Sondheim, including a rich, powerful rendition of ‘The Glamorous Life’ — she completed an effortless turn from dexterity to strength, a turn more impressive for being imperceptibly gradual. Like Sondheim, McDonald does amazing things by often seeming to do very little at all."

Boston Globe

"Resplendent in a floral-design silk dress, Audra McDonald sustained her reputation Sunday night as a leading Broadway actress, American songbook vocalist and star performer with major orchestras and opera companies. Her 90-minute, intermission-free, 18-song set at a soldout Ozawa Hall (with one of the largest lawn crowds in recent memory) represented a manysplendored sampling of her diverse repertoire enhanced by her ability to forge an immediate, intimate rapport with the audience."

The Berkshire Eagle

"On Sunday evening, four-time Tony Award-winner Audra McDonald came out onto the stage of Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood and launched right into her first song… It was the perfect way to start the concert, giving the audience exactly what they had come to hear: her voice. Her voice is gorgeous. It is lush, expressive, rich, full of color and texture, and beautiful in tone. Am I overstating it? Not really. Her singing voice is simply wonderful, and she makes it look so easy. When McDonald wasn’t singing, she charmed any audience members who weren’t already won over with her easy manner and humorous anecdotes"

Berkshire Living

"McDonald, that lustrous life force with the plush velvet voice that can simultaneously melt hearts and generate thrills… But it was McDonald’s take on ‘The Glamorous Life,’ the song of a young girl ruefully explaining her actress mother’s absences, that was the revelation. McDonald (resplendent in a white, Grecian-style gown) is a working mother herself, and she brilliantly twined the ache of both mother and child to incendiary effect. She also soared with ‘Anyone Can Whistle,’ from the show of the same name (remarkable just for her breathtaking emphasis on the word ‘free’), and in ‘Happiness,’ the duet from ‘Passion’ for which she paired ideally with [Michael] Cerveris."

Chicago Sun-Times

"Audra McDonald is our Judy, our Barbra, as in Garland and Streisand. Yeah, yeah, it’s a heresy to say it, to strike a comparison between anyone from this era and those Hall of Fame divas. But how else to explain the electric commotion accompanying McDonald's mere stepping out onto the stage Monday night at Davies Symphony Hall? She’s the diva next door: tall, a tiny bit gawky, totally gorgeous—and that voice. Full and mellow, elegant and sexy, lush, plush, brassy, growling, howling across her gigantic range, or expressing starry-eyed enchantment. She pounces on a song like a cat, then lives inside it."

San Jose Mercury News

"The roar from the crowd at a packed Davies Symphony Hall Monday night was unnerving. It was loud and deep and it went on and on. The reception for Audra McDonald, summery in a pink and orange shift, brought to mind some of the most enthusiastic initial applauses I remember in the house: Barbara Cook, Gustavo Dudamel, Montserrat Caballe... But there was something different. On other nights, the applause subsided as the performance began. On Monday, after McDonald motioned for silence, she started singing, and after the first line — ‘Look at me ...’ — the roar returned. Then she sang: ‘I am GORGEOUS!’ and eardrums were pierced by the audience."

San Francisco Classical Voice

"The turbulent feelings erupting so suddenly in Olivia’s heart are rendered with a lovely glow in Ms. McDonald’s affecting performance. She is among the most accomplished musical theater performers of her generation (and gets to sing a little here, fans will be happy to know), but her musicianship doesn’t stop at the level of the verse. In the arcing emotional phrases of the role — Olivia’s snapping to life under the charm of Cesario’s testy challenge, or her instant wilting at ‘his’ rejection — Ms. McDonald limns the surging music of love’s unfolding with touching truth."

The New York Times