REVIEW

Audra McDonald conquers Lansing to open 90th season

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I arrived at Saturday’s Lansing Symphony opener with an ice cube in my bosom — a pointy, petty suspicion that the symphony was slipping a pipsqueak pops concert under the ermine-trimmed, patriarchal robes of its “MasterWorks” series.

Instantly, I was thrown from my high horse by the tough love of Audra McDonald. Happily bruised and grass-stained, I fully recant. After an evening of grand, funny, ravishing and seamless collaboration between one of Broadway’s greatest stars and the home team, conducted by maestro Timothy Muffitt, my apprehensiveness dissipated. It’s going to be hard to top this one.

Despite international multimedia acclaim, McDonald never came off as the superstar blowing into Tank Town, checking her watch for the time in Paris.

This rare collaboration appeared completely relaxed and comfortable, despite the short rehearsal time and sophisticated arrangements. Deftly integrating her own touring trio, McDonald, Muffitt and the orchestra turned out some 20 tunes from Broadway and the Great American Songbook, each one as musically polished and emotionally committed as the last.

The orchestra, strings in particular, wove an almost unbearably tender nest for her as she sang “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” from “South Pacific,” giving the song’s message of racial tolerance an understated urgency that made you want to lean in and listen for dear life.

McDonald swung into the jazzy “Cornet Man” from “Funny Girl,” garnished by a swaggering solo from principal trumpet Justin Emerich.

True to form, McDonald name-checked Emerich after “Cornet Man,” singling him out in the back row and gave multiple nods to Muffitt and the orchestra.

McDonald’s self-deprecating, keep-it-real banter between tunes was as pitch perfect as her singing.

In McDonald’s thrilling treatment of the Mother Superior’s “Sound of Music” apotheosis, the anthem’s synthetic, vague platitudes poured forth as naturally as organic honey from free-range bees.

She further punctured the dirigible by adding an anecdote about her young  daughter’s “review” of her live TV performance in the Mother Superior role, via text message: “Where are the dryer sheets?”

Suffice it to say that from start to finish, she had a packed house in complete thrall. By the time she put a killer bend into a single syllable — the word “time” from the standard “Summertime” — a man in the audience pretty much lost it. That man, the first to shoot up in the ensuing standing ovation, was California composer Bruce Stark, who was having quite a day.

Before McDonald’s part of the program, the orchestra gave a vigorous, deep-breathing performance of Stark’s “Symphonic Dances” that had the composer grinning during the intermission schmooze to the point of pain.

Violinist and concertmaster Ran Cheng adorned glimmering dragonfly wings onto the first movement, inspired by Stark’s childhood love of bluegrass music. She was present and poised, infusing her fiddle with the sweet air of wonderment that perfectly complemented the music’s wanderous, restless drive. Stark’s second movement avoided the cringe-worthy “jazz” gestures made by so many well-meaning classical composers. The finale tethered loose ends with rolling, chopping momentum that fed upon itself until the suite was sweetly spent.

Along the way, Muffitt muscled several sudden, shocking crescendi out of Stark’s generally genial score, as if to remind everyone that this was a symphony orchestra, after all, and you have to expect to get the works now and then.

 

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