Nonesuch
2006
Build A Bridge
About This Album
Audra McDonald's third solo album was called Happy Songs, which wasn't entirely an accurate description of the contents. Her fourth CD, Build a Bridge, might have been called Unhappy Songs, since it consists largely of compositions with lovelorn lyrics. But a better way to think of it is as her take on music of the rock era. A Juilliard-educated star of Broadway musicals and plays, McDonald has built her solo recording career carefully, beginning with an album largely devoted to upcoming theater music composers (Way Back to Paradise, 1998), followed by one that looked back to earlier ones like Harold Arlen (How Glory Goes, 2000), and then Happy Songs (2002), on which she covered interwar pop standards associated with predecessors such as Ethel Waters. Even on the second and third discs, she managed to find room for more songs by her favorites among the new Broadway writers, particularly Adam Guettel and Michael John LaChiusa, and she does again on Build a Bridge; in fact, the title song is by Guettel. But the other songwriting names include such familiar pop/rock figures as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, John Mayer, Nellie McKay, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman, Rufus Wainwright, and Neil Young.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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