Audra McDonald will sing favorites in Milwaukee
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald is singing a program of her favorite songs with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on June 6.
“For me, singing a song is about the ‘why,’ ” McDonald said during a recent phone interview. “Why are you singing what you’re singing? What does the character want in the song?”
McDonald will feature songs from her new album, “Sing Happy,” along with some longtime favorites. If you’re keeping score, she’s won Tonys for her roles in “Carousel,” “Master Class,” “Ragtime,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.” McDonald is the first person to win a Tony in all four acting categories.
“You can sing a very quiet song in a very, very large hall,” McDonald said. “If you’re focused on what your character wants, you can bring the entire hall down to hear a pin drop.”
It may sound like what performers still refer to as having an audience “in the palm of your hand,” but that’s not the way McDonald sees it.
“It’s really about all of us having the same moment,” she said. “We are all in the story together, all aware of being with each other in this moment, collectively, and all focused on the same thing.”
“Really, we have each other in the palms of hands,” she said. “It’s about opening lines of communication.”
Before she can connect with an audience, though, she has to have a connection to the song.
“Songs have to speak to me in a personal way,” she said. “That’s not always a deep and emotional connection
though — sometimes they just have to be comical to me.”
“Other songs speak to me in this political climate,” she continued, mentioning her pairing of Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen,” from “Into the Woods,” and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” from “South Pacific” as such songs.
Last year, the 46-year-old McDonald, who was already the mother of a 16-year-old daughter, was surprised to find herself carrying a second child. In addition to giving renewed meaning to such songs as the “Children Will Listen”/“Carefully Taught” pairing, the birth of her second child led her back to songs she sang years ago.
“Lately I’ve been singing ‘A Lullaby’ again, which I sang 20 years ago. It was on my first album (1998’s “Way Back to Paradise”),” she said.
“There are some songs I left behind, but now I miss them too much,” she said. “I bring them back and lower them a step, or do whatever I have to do to sing them again,”
Among favorites she’s returned to are: “I Won’t Mind,” a heartbreaking love song from a woman to a baby, written by Jeff Blumenkrantz, Annie Kessler and Libby Saines; and “Simple Little Things,” from “110 in the Shade,” with music by Tom Jones and lyrics by Harvey Schmidt, the creators of “The Fantasticks.”
“Simple Little Things,” McDonald said, speaks to her now more then ever because, “it’s a tumultuous time we’re living through, and it has me thinking about what matters most in my life.”