How Glory Goes

By TERRY TEACHOUT

Flash: Audra McDonald sings standards! In the hotly awaited follow-up to her debut CD, Way Back to Paradise, Broadway's most adventurous singer offers a shrewdly mixed bill of old favorites (The Man That Got Away) and postmodern show tunes (Come Down from the Tree). Her silver voice is smoky yet refined, her diction clear as a cold mountain stream. Best of all is a passionately sung medley of Leonard Bernstein's Somewhere and Adam Guettel's How Glory Goes (from Floyd Collins), which she turns into a haunting declaration of doubt-flecked faith.

--By Terry Teachout