Audra McDonald to Depart PRIVATE PRACTICE

TVLine.com has broken the news that Audra McDonald will be leaving the hit, ABC drama PRIVATE PRACTICE at the end of this season so she can be closer to her NY-based family, including 10 year old daughter Zoe. She expected to make future guest appearances on the show however. 

Audra McDonald's fields of accomplishment are many and varied, encompassing the worlds of stage, screen and music. 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," for which she received Emmy and Image Award nominations, 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."

Earning three Tony Awards before the age of 30 and a fourth in 2004 ("Carousel," "Master Class," "Ragtime" and "A Raisin in the Sun"), McDonald holds an unprecedented position in the theater world. She recently starred in The Public Theater's presentation of "Twelfth Night" in Central Park with Anne Hathaway.

McDonald is also a major concert and recording artist who appears regularly on many of the great stages of the world. She 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.

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.

 

Photo Credit: Linda Lenzi

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