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"How Glory Goes"
After Audra McDonald's audacious recording
debut with Way Back to Paradise, a collection of newly composed,
highly sophisticated theater music, this new disc dominated by
Harold Arlen standards would seem to be a retrenchment. On closer
inspection, not so. Anybody who would risk comparisons with Barbra
Streisand and Judy Garland by recording "A Sleepin' Bee"
and "The Man That Got Away" isn't playing it safe.
Audra McDonald comes out fine, though, not because she's better
than her elders, but because she is different. What pop singers
do with rhetorical flourishes, the operatically trained Audra
does with color and phrase shape, much more so here than on Way
Back to Paradise. Indeed, McDonald is in radiant voice. The differences
multiply with the orchestrations, which give a Coplandesque slant
to "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home. --David Patrick Stearns |
Customer review from Amazon
Reviewer: Eric M Katz from Seattle, WA
Rarely does a solo artist have a 2nd cd that surpasses the first.
McDonald does! From the opening number, "Any Place I Hang
My Hat Is Home" Audra's voice is beautiful. Her voice shows
tenderness in the song "I Won't Mind" and breaks your
heart in "The Man That Got Away". Singing songs from
past and present Broadway shows, as well as original compositions,
Audra's voice masters songs from Johnny Mercer's "St. Louis
Woman" and Truman Capote's ill-fated, "House of Flowers".
For those who liked Audra's first cd, "Way Back to Paradise",
(and even those who didn't) or have heard her on the soundtracks
of "Ragtime" or "Carousel", Audra's voice
reigns supreme on this cd. Absolutely beautiful! |
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