Bravo McDonald and Cho

UCSB Arts & Lectures provided a wonderful double bill at Campbell Hall when unparalleled Broadway singer Audra McDonald and Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho performed within 24 hours of each other.

McDonald, winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards and an Emmy, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, and received a National Medal of the Arts – America’s highest honor for achievement in the field – from President Barack Obama.

A Juilliard-trained soprano, she maintains a major career as a concert artist. McDonald was also Olivier Award-nominated in 2017 for her performance in London’s West End in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.

Her highly entertaining 90-minute Santa Barbara show, where she was accompanied by accomplished pianist Jeremy Jordan, included works from the Great White Way and the Great American Songbook including Jerry Herman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, and Bernstein.

Berlin-based Cho, who in 2015 won first prize in the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, was on the top of his form playing Haydn’s “Sonata in E Minor,” Ravel’s “Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn” and “Miroirs,” Mozart’s “Adagio in B Minor,” selections from Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage, and “Deuxième Année: Italie.”

A dynamic duo, indeed.