Way Back to Paradise

1	Dream Variations 1:58
2	Way Back To Paradise 2:27
3	Come To Jesus 6:06
4	You Don't Know This Man 2:13
5	Tom 4:39
6	A Tragic Story 1:25
7	Song For A Dark Girl 2:38
8	Baby Moon 4:15
9	The Allure Of Silence 2:54
10	Stars And The Moon 4:24
11	I Follow 4:43
12	Mistress Of The Senator 3:29
13	A Lullaby 4:40
14	Daybreak In Alabama 3:14

Barnes & Noble

McDonald's solo CD debut confirms the three-time Tony winner's place in the forefront of young singing theater artists. It displays the impressive range of her distinctive, opera-level soprano and her capacity for out-of-the-ordinary emotional expressiveness. Way Back to Paradise also exhibits McDonald's audacious spirit: Every selection is from the pen of a young theater composer. Songs such as Ricky Ann Gordon's musical setting of Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Variations" and Adam Guettel's "The Allure of Silence" are choice and challenging expressions from emerging new talents. McDonald's searing rendition of Michael John La Chiusa's bruising "Mistress of the Senator" is no less adventurous. Tangy, blues-tinged and powerful, McDonald's rendition of Guettel's "Baby Moon" is a promising preview of what this great talent will do someday when -- hopefully -- she tears into Porgy and Bess. Andrew Velez

All Music Guide

Broadway star Audra McDonald took an unexpected approach to her debut solo album, eschewing the usual practice of performing standards in favor of spotlighting a group of young theater composers in songs, many of them given their first recordings, written for her or for so far unproduced musicals. Jason Robert Brown, Jenny Giering, Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel, and Michael John LaChiusa contributed a variety of material, allowing McDonald to assume such characters as the wife of an accused murderer (Brown's "You Don' t Know This Man" from the subsequently produced Parade), an expectant mother (Guettel's "Baby Moon"), and the "Mistress of a Senator" (from LaChiusa's 1994 musical Hello Again). LaChiusa's "Way Back to Paradise" was a feminist anthem from Marie Christine, a show in which McDonald planned to star, while "A Tragic Story" was Guettel's setting of a comic poem by William Makepeace Thackeray, and "A Lullaby" was Gordon's melody to a text by James Agee. Thus, the material was diverse, if unfailingly theatrical. Nevertheless, this was an art project, with its restrained, piano plus chamber orchestra arrangements and seriously intended, dramatic songs. What kept it from being stuffy and fragmented was the commitment of McDonald's performances. Along with a stunning soprano voice, she proved very much a singing actress who invested each song with a believable character. She was better at passion than humor (notably failing to bring out the ironic sting in Brown's "Stars and the Moon"), but she saved Gordon's three settings of texts by Langston Hughes, even making them the structure on which the rest of the album hung. She deserved accolades both for the risky concept of the album and for its execution. William Ruhlmann