Bio
Audra McDonald is a German-born American actress and singer best known for her starring role as Dr. Naomi Bennett, co-founder of Oceanside Wellness Centre and ex-wife of Dr. Sam Bennett, in the television dramedy series Private Practice, from 2007-2011.
Earning an unprecedented three Tony Awards before the age of 30 and later a fourth (Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun), singer and actress Audra McDonald is frequently compared to legendary performers like Garland and Streisand.
Blending a luscious, classically-trained soprano with an incomparable gift for dramatic storytelling, McDonald is also a major concert and recording artist who appears regularly on many of the great stages of the world.
McDonald has sung regularly with all the major American orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, under many of the world's greatest conductors, such as John Adams, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Overseas she is a return visitor to London's BBC Proms, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, and made her Paris debut at the TMP/Chatelet.
Her film and television work includes her critically-acclaimed reprisal of her Tony Award-winning role as Ruth Younger in 2008's ABC made-for-television A Raisin in the Sun, her Emmy-nominated performance in HBO's Mike Nichols production of Wit (opposite Emma Thompson) and her portrayal of Grace Farrell in the made-for-television Disney production of Annie.
An exclusive recording artist for Nonesuch Records, McDonald's four solo discs (Build A Bridge, Way Back to Paradise, How Glory Goes and Happy Songs), comprising both popular standards and contemporary music theater songs, have won a wide audience.