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JEFFREY BROWN:Finally tonight: a leading lady of musical theater and much more.
When Audra McDonald sings of going back home in a song by John Kander and Fred Ebb, she means it.
New York is her home, but she spent much of the last four years in Los Angeles playing the dramatic role of a doctor in the television series "Private Practice."
ACTOR:You don't like me?
AUDRA MCDONALD,Singer/Actress: No. No, I don't.
JEFFREY BROWN:It was just the latest in what's become a whirlwind career of new challenges that includes work in films and opera and now serving as host in "Live From Lincoln Center" on PBS.
AUDRA MCDONALD:Good evening. And welcome to the best seat in the house.
JEFFREY BROWN:Then there's her true artistic home, musical theater. At just 42, McDonald is already among the most honored performers in Broadway history.
AUDRA MCDONALD:I found the theater and I found my home. I love you. Thank you so very much. Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN:The winner of five Tony Awards, including for "Carousel" in 1994, and "A Raisin in the Sun" 10 years later.
And last year, she won for her acclaimed role as Bess in a new production of the Gershwin' "Porgy and Bess." We talked recently at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, D.C., as she just released her first solo album in seven years. Titled "Go Back Home," it celebrates her love of musical theater.
AUDRA MCDONALD:I feel most at home on stage, since I was a little girl, since I started in the dinner theater in Fresno, Calif., and there was something about, you know—look, performers are needy. We're needy beasts. So, you know, there's what you get from the audience.
And for me, it's the rush of being forced to be so in the present.
JEFFREY BROWN:McDonald has long been known as a champion of contemporary songwriters and what most often attracts her to a particular song is the story it tells.
One example on the new album, the song "Baltimore" by the songwriting team of Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler.
AUDRA MCDONALD:The song talks about certain—one shouldn't fall for men from Baltimore.
JEFFREY BROWN:Right.
AUDRA MCDONALD:And while I have not had any experience with men in Baltimore, I certainly can ...
JEFFREY BROWN:No knock on Baltimore.
AUDRA MCDONALD:No, no, no, no, but I certainly can relate to the type of men that the song describes. And so for me, I had an immediate reaction. I thought, well, I know that story. I can sing that.
JEFFREY BROWN:In the liner notes for the album, McDonald explains the presence of the song "Edelweiss" from "The Sound of Music."
At age nine, she writes, she needed a song for her first audition with a professional theater group in Fresno. She performed it with her father, who died six years ago and clearly had a huge influence on her life.
AUDRA MCDONALD:I practiced it with my dad playing the piano. And so we went down to the theater not realizing that they would have an accompanist there. But I didn't know that accompanist. I didn't know that person, so my dad, my huge, hulking dad, got down and sat down on the piano and played it.
JEFFREY BROWN:You're telling the story as though you remember it extremely well.
AUDRA MCDONALD:I do.
JEFFREY BROWN:You do?
AUDRA MCDONALD:I do, absolutely.
JEFFREY BROWN:Yes.
AUDRA MCDONALD:Every bit of it. I remember—my dad was 6'6'', this strapping, huge guy. He had humongous hands.
And he would just put his hands down on the piano to play and you could hardly see the rest of the keys. And he was so big. And I just felt very safe, you know?
JEFFREY BROWN:You also describe yourself in those notes a young girl with a little potbelly, hyperactive and overly dramatic.
