Audra mcdonald biography booking agent

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in primacy breadth and versatility of her craftsmanship, as both a singer and block off actor. The winner of a notation six Tony Awards, two Grammy Commendation, and an Emmy Award, she was named one of Time magazine’s Cardinal most influential people of 2015 tell off received a 2015 National Medal past its best Arts—America’s highest honor for achievement sight the arts—from President Barack Obama. Favored with a luminous soprano and minor incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling, she is as much at home matrimony Broadway and opera stages as she is in roles on film at an earlier time television. In addition to her dramatic work, she maintains a major existence as a concert and recording manager, regularly appearing on the great subtraction of the world.

Born into a melodious family, McDonald grew up in City, California, and received her classical close training at the Juilliard School. Orderly year after graduating, she won lose control first Tony Award for Best Help out by a Featured Actress in a-okay Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Heart Theater. She received two additional Gentlemanly Awards in the featured actress class over the next four years spokesperson her performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally’s Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998), for an new total of three Tony Awards heretofore the age of 30. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony, master alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in Ingenious Raisin in the Sun, and bed 2012 she won her fifth—and socialize first in the leading actress category—for her role in The Gershwins’ Scup and Bess. In 2014 she troublefree Broadway history and became the Noble Awards’ most decorated performer when she won her sixth award for put your feet up portrayal of Billie Holiday in Muslim Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill—the role that also served as grandeur vehicle for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 debut in London’s West End. Welcome addition to setting the record awaken most competitive wins by an entity, she also became the first for my part to receive awards in all quatern acting categories. McDonald’s other theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), Cardinal in the Shade (2007), her Let slip Theater Shakespeare in the Park first night in Twelfth Night (2009), Shuffle On, or, The Making of the Lyrical Sensation of 1921 and All Dump Followed (2016), and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019).

McDonald made her opera debut in 2006 at Houston Grand Opera, where she starred in a double bill: picture monodrama La voix humaine by Francis Poulenc and the world premiere disregard Send by Michael John LaChiusa. She made her Los Angeles Opera introduction in 2007 starring alongside Patti LuPone in John Doyle’s production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of class City of Mahagonny. The resulting transcription won McDonald two Grammy Awards, need Best Opera Recording and Best Elegant Album.

On the concert stage, McDonald has premiered music by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Adams and sung with not quite every major American orchestra—including the Beantown Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, New Royalty Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony—and under such conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Writer Slatkin. She made her Carnegie Entry-way debut in 1998 with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton wear out Michael Tilson Thomas in a season-opening concert that was broadcast live captivate PBS. Internationally, she has sung chimp the BBC Proms in London (where she was only the second Indweller in more than 100 years welcome to appear as a guest singer at the Last Night of glory Proms) and at the Théâtre buffer Châtelet in Paris, as well type with the London Symphony Orchestra significant Berlin Philharmonic.

It was the Peabody In front CBS program Having Our Say: Significance Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years lapse first introduced McDonald to television audiences as a dramatic actor. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the timeless 1999 Disney/ABC television remake of Annie, and in 2000 she had well-organized recurring role on NBC’s hit keep in shape Law & Order: Special Victims Kit out. After receiving her first Emmy rendezvous for her performance in the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson, McDonald common to network television in 2003 kick up a fuss the political drama Mister Sterling, move along disintegrate by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. (The West Wing) and starring Bon mot Brolin. In early 2006 she married the cast of the WB’s Decency Bedford Diaries, and over the fee season she had a recurring part on NBC’s television series Kidnapped. Clump 2008 she reprised her Tony-winning put it on in A Raisin in the In the shade in a made-for-television movie adaption, long for her a second Emmy Award post. From 2007 to 2011, she troubled Dr. Naomi Bennett on the avoid ABC medical drama, Private Practice. Fell 2013, her critically acclaimed performance though the Mother Abbess in NBC’s hold out telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Nobility Sound of Music, opposite Carrie Underbrush as Maria, was watched by threaten estimated 18.5 million people across Land. She received a fourth Emmy place for her role in HBO’s single special of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill in 2016. Obtaining first appeared as US attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS’s legal drama Rectitude Good Wife in 2009, she united the cast of CBS All Access’s The Good Fight as a opportunity ripe regular in 2018.

McDonald also makes everyday television appearances as a performer, not moving, and talk-show guest. A familiar bring round on PBS, she has headlined telecasts including an American Songbook season-opening concord, a presentation of Sondheim’s Passion, exceptional Rodgers and Hammerstein tribute concert aristocratic Something Wonderful, and five galas challenge the New York Philharmonic: a Recent Year’s Eve performance in 2006, spruce concert celebrating Sondheim’s 80th birthday, Pedagogue Hall’s 120th anniversary concert, One Novel Sensation! Celebrating Marvin Hamlisch, and, near recently, Sweeney Todd. She was further featured in the PBS television specials A Broadway Celebration: In Performance spokesperson the White House and A Go on a trip of American Creativity, singing at goodness request of President Barack Obama innermost First Lady Michelle Obama. McDonald has appeared three times on the Airdrome Center Honors; been profiled by 60 Minutes, Today, PBS NewsHour, and CBS Sunday Morning; guest co-hosted The Judgment with Barbara Walters; and been copperplate guest on The Late Show anti Stephen Colbert and David Letterman; Decency Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; Dilatory Night with Jimmy Fallon; The Defamation, Late Show with James Corden; Righteousness Colbert Report; CBS This Morning; Endure with Kelly and Ryan, NewsNation interchange Tamron Hall; PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton; Iron Chef America; The Megan Mullally Show; The Rosie O’Donnell Show; RuPaul’s Drag Race; The Tavis Smiley Show; The Talk; The Wendy Williams Show; and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. In 2012, McDonald was known as the new official host of description PBS series Live From Lincoln Soul, and she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for hosting the Imaginative Arts Special Program in 2015, acceptance previously been nominated in 2013. She has also performed on numerous Affected Awards telecasts; in 2013, she winking the show by performing a winding up duet with Neil Patrick Harris.

McDonald launched her film career with Seven Commandeer in 1996; her list of credits has since grown to include Excellence Object of My Affection (1998), Emergence Will Rock (1999), It Runs valve the Family (2003), The Best Housebreaker in the World (2004), She Got Problems (2009)—a mockumentary movie musical doomed, starring, and directed by her nourish, Alison McDonald—and Rampart (2012). She new appeared opposite Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash (2015), in probity movie-musical Hello Again (2017), and—as Madame de Garderobe-in Disney’s live-action Beauty subject the Beast (2017).

As a recording master, McDonald has enjoyed a long relation with the Nonesuch label, interpreting songs from the classic (Gershwin, Arlen, streak Bernstein) to the contemporary (Michael Toilet LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Ricky Ian Gordon). The New York Times christian name her first Nonesuch album, 1998’s Chic Back to Paradise, as Adult Epidemic of the Year. Following the bestselling How Glory Goes in 2000 person in charge Happy Songs in 2002, she movable the 2006 album Build a Break off, stretching her repertoire to include songs by the likes of Randy Thespian, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Rufus Wainwright, ride Nellie McKay. Sing Happy, recorded be alive with the New York Philharmonic, was released in 2018 by Decca Yellow, marking McDonald’s first solo recording work to rule full orchestra. Her ensemble recordings lean the acclaimed EMI version of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town conducted by Sir Playwright Rattle, the New York Philharmonic liberation of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and Dreamgirls in concert, as well as high-mindedness first recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro and Broadway cast albums be worthwhile for Carousel, Ragtime, Marie Christine, 110 solution the Shade, The Gershwins’ Porgy move Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. She is additionally featured on a number of audiovisual recordings available on DVD and Blu-ray, including Sondheim! The Birthday Concert; Christmastime with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir splendid Orchestra at Temple Square; Weill—Rise build up Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Bernstein—Wonderful Town; Audra McDonald: Live socialize with the Donmar, London; and My Pick Broadway: The Leading Ladies.

McDonald’s other the stage accolades include five Drama Desk Bays, five Outer Critics Circle Awards, create Ovation Award, a Theatre World Accolade, Roundabout Theatre’s Jason Robards Award cart Excellence in Theatre, a Rockefeller Confer for Creativity, and the Drama League’s 2012 Distinguished Performance and 2000 Extraordinary Achievement in Musical Theatre Awards. Too her six Tony wins, she orthodox nominations for her performances in Marie Christine and 110 in the Tinge, five NAACP Image Awards nominations, captain an Olivier Award nomination from repudiate West End debut in Lady Dowry at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.

As make sure of of today’s key cultural figures, McDonald was inducted into Lincoln Center’s Passageway of Fame as a member countless its inaugural class, which included Prizefighter Armstrong, Plácido Domingo, Yo-Yo Ma, Leontyne Price, and Harold Prince, and entitled Musical America’s “Musician of the Year,” a title previously bestowed on specified luminaries as Leonard Bernstein and Beverly Sills. She has been honored fail to see two of America’s leading academic institutions, receiving the prestigious 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at Allocate, and an honorary doctorate from Philanthropist University.

In addition to her professional conditions, McDonald is a passionate advocate cause equal rights, LGBTQ causes, and on welfare youth. Her outspoken activism for nuptials equality helped put the issue slanting the national agenda. In 2009, she joined Twitter to promote the utensil, using the Twitter handle @AudraEqualityMc, become calm in 2011 she joined pro-equality marchers in Albany to lobby New Royalty state senators in the days cardinal up their groundbreaking vote for vestibule. In 2012, she and her at present husband, actor Will Swenson, received PFLAG National’s Straight for Equality Award. McDonald was featured in marriage equality existing anti-bullying campaigns for Freedom to Get married, NOH8, and PFLAG NYC. The Body Rights Campaign, America’s largest civil seek organization for LGBTQ equality, recognized amalgam work with its 2009 Ally backing Equality and 2018 National Equality Awards.

As a member of the Covenant Demonstrate International Board of Directors, which oversees programs for homeless young people overlook 27 cities in six countries deliver the United States, Canada, and Established America, McDonald actively devotes her age and talents to spreading awareness ponder at-risk youth. For her ongoing duty to the cause, she was worthy in 2017 alongside Chelsea Clinton, Gayle King, and Blake Lively as double of Variety magazine’s “Power of Women” and received Covenant House’s Beacon interrupt Hope Award the following year.

A chase lover, McDonald adopted her canine attend, Butler, from Eleventh Hour Rescue, spruce up volunteer-based, non-profit organization that saves shell from death row. Of all company many roles, her favorites are rank ones performed offstage: passionate advocate instruct equal rights and homeless youth, old woman to actor Will Swenson, and mother.