[Dixielandjazz] Singer Audra McDonald

[Stephen Barbone]

Is anyone familiar with this singer?

Cheers,
Steve barbone


November 5, 2002 - New York Times

Audra McDonald Casts Her Spell on Sadness

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

      For any singer to occupy the rarefied territory where art song,
Broadway and jazz happily coexist involves the most elaborate diplomacy
this side of the Balkans. Each faction has its unilateral demands. The
highbrow element requires a recital-like decorum and refined technical
mastery that pull against the Broadway faction's need for a raucous lack
of inhibition, while the jazz side insists on a steady undertow of
swing.

In her Carnegie Hall debut concert on Saturday evening, Audra McDonald
negotiated as satisfying a settlement as one could to hope to hear. Like
Lena Horne, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand before her, Ms. McDonald
has settled on Harold Arlen's song book as the musical touchstone for
her stylistic diplomacy, and the program featured five Arlen songs.

The concert focused on Ms. McDonald's third solo album, "Happy Songs"
(Nonesuch), a collection of material written mostly between the two
world wars and arranged in a style that treats swing and jazz as a kind
of blues-inflected chamber music. Dance-hall music that aspires to the
elegance of a salon, it might be called "le jazz hot."

The small orchestra, conducted by Ted Sperling, that accompanied the
singer was weighted toward brass and included only one violin. Many of
the arrangements evoked the Cotton Club of Duke Ellington and were
discreetly punctuated with the wah-wah growl of a muted trumpet.

Because "Happy Songs" includes some blues-flavored laments, its title
should not be taken too literally. As the singer explained from the
stage, the underlying mood of even the sadder music from the interwar
years was irrepressibly buoyant. And in song after song, Ms. McDonald,
maintained an emotional balance that quickened even the most heartbroken
wail with a current of resilience.

Ms. McDonald, who comes from the theater, admitted that she has had
little experience singing with a band, and in the numbers that used the
full orchestra, her rhythmic drive remained demure even as her voice
rose to a powerful bluesy wail. But in the smaller-scale arrangements,
especially in a version of "I Must Have That Man" for voice, guitar and
bass, a sly sense of swing took over her singing, making it sexy as well
as beautiful.

The concert's high points ("Bill" from "Show Boat" and "He Loves and She
Loves," from "Funny Face") were those moments that found Ms. McDonald
least encumbered by the band and permitted to soar in her delicately
soulful way. Exquisitely varying the timbre and dynamics of her lustrous
lyric soprano she retold these familiar stories with an involvement and
depth of understanding that made you hang on every syllable.