Grammy Winner Fantasia Barrino to Parade Back to Broadway This Fall

Fantasia Barrino is coming back to Broadway this October. The Grammy winner unveiled her plans to return to the Great White Way on The Today Show on June 12. No word yet on which show Barrino will star in, though a likely vehicle is the Broadway-bound musical Cotton Club Parade. The Warren Carlyle-helmed revue is expected to begin performances at a yet-to-be-announced theater this fall. Reps for the musical and Barrino could not confirm at this time.

Barrino catapulted to fame in 2004 as the winner of American Idol, defeating Broadway vet Diana DeGarmo for the title. Her debut album, Free Yourself, received four Grammy nominations and was followed by a second self-titled release. Barrino made her Broadway debut in April 2007 when she took over the role of Celie in The Color Purple, receiving a Broadway.com Audience Choice Award and Theatre World Award for her performance. She later toured with the show. In 2011, she won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance for the single "Bittersweet" off her third album, Back to Me.  Barrino also headlined her own VH1 reality series, Fantasia for Real. She recently released her fourth studio album Side Effects of You.

Cotton Club Parade is a celebration of Duke Ellington’s years at the famed Harlem nightclub in the 1920s, when the joint was jumping with revues featuring big band, swing and blues. The musical feature singers, dancers and variety actswith songs by the greatest jazz composers of the time, including Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields (“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”), Harold Arlen (“Stormy Weather”), and of course, Duke Ellington (“Rockin’ in Rhythm). Cotton Club Parade began at New City Center's Encores! in November 2011, and then played a return engagement in November 2012.

Click below to hear Barrino tease her Broadway return on The Today Show.