Review: Alicia Keys, immaculate from the first note, captivates Scotiabank crowd

Alicia Keys

July 14 at the Scotiabank Arena, Toronto

For her second Toronto appearance in less than a year, Alicia Keys was in the mood to celebrate — from the first note.

Performing at the Scotiabank Arena over last August’s Budweiser Stage, the collective audience heard Keys before they saw her; the woman’s impeccable voice ringing out as she sang the a cappella intro to “Fallin’,” the 2001 chart-topper that first introduced her music to our ears.

The lights jolted on as she strode toward her plexiglass-topped, sparkling white Yamaha grand piano, which she stood at to perform — Keys stroking the keys — as a rotating stage offered a 360-degree view. It was quite the grand entrance.

Since the elegantly-garbed singer, songwriter and pianist — dressed for her first set in a light green pantsuit, running shoes, and complemented by a pair of opulent sunglasses that may have been worth a week of most of our salaries — decided that her “Keys To The Summer” tour was best suited to be performed “in the round,” her diamond-shaped stage was flanked by two catwalks that stretched the length of the arena, with one end leading up a staircase to a second platform close to the Maple Square side of the building.

And if you still had trouble seeing her there were two massive video screens, along with a pair of smaller ones, which ensured close-ups and even further 360-degree visibility.

This wasn’t so much a concert as it was a marathon. For just under two hours, Keys pretty much let the music flow with very few breaks, offering a combination of hits and deep cuts from her eight-album studio catalogue — as well as a trio of well-chosen covers that hit the sweet spot of the estimated crowd of 12,000.

Nor did Keys stick to her piano station. After completing “Fallin’” and a portion of the soulful “New Day,” she spent the majority of her time dancing, grooving and swaying to her particular blend of R&B and pop as the 15-time Grammy winner’s five-piece crackerjack band laid the musical foundation for the evening.

And it would be almost criminal to identify singer Norelle Simpson as her supporting vocalist; she played a much bigger role in the show, serving as Keys’ vocal foil and filling in a lot of the gaps with her formidable lungs when the featured star was focusing on turning and twirling.

Keys is also quite versatile, as she leaned into the dancehall riddim of “Limitedless” from 2012’s “Girl On Fire” and melting it into “You Don’t Know My Name,” — although the latter was a bit of a disappointment in that the cascading piano passage that sounds like raindrops was left to a sample rather than the superstar’s ivory prowess for public reproduction.

It should be noted that as much as most Alicia Keys’ songs are about matters of the heart when it comes to romantic trials and tribulations, the concert’s subtext was also about authenticity, pride and empowerment.

For her second set, Keys — this time dressed in a gold pantsuit with silver boots and a silver Phoenix medallion hanging around her neck — played an upright piano on the second stage for a solo cover of the late Prince’s “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore.”

As she was finishing the song, she promptly advised the women in the audience that, “if he doesn’t call, time to move on. You don’t need to go begging for love.”

Not surprisingly, that performance segued into “A Woman’s Worth” and “Superwoman,” as if to nail the point that no one should settle for second best, whether it comes to love or making one’s dreams come true.

There were plenty of full-on rhythmic highs, including an energetic climax that began with “Girl On Fire” and continued with an exultant “Empire State Of Mind (Part II)” with Toronto serenading its love for the Big Apple to one of its most celebratory residents. A throbbing cover of The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” merging with an energetic “In Common” kept the party momentum at a feverish pitch.

However, the show wasn’t flawless.

There were a few moments when the audience didn’t immediately respond to Keys requesting them to sing along to songs like “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)” or “A Woman’s Worth,” and that’s because they couldn’t hear her when she spoke. The sound had its cloudy and cavernous moments, much of it due to the unusual angles of stage gear that interfered with overall clarity.

The other downside was the appearance of a male dancer that substituted for a duet partner during “My Boo,” the 2004 hit Keys shared with Usher. Whenever they synched their choreography, they were fine, but when left to his own devices, whatever he was expressing seemed to promote dramatic desperation in those leaps and bounds rather than tasteful artistry.

Regardless, the muse that people paid to see was immaculate in her performance of the 30 or so songs in her setlist. As the zealous crowd partied the night away with the encore of “I Ain’t Got You,” it was plain to see that they had individually and collectively found their Keys to happiness.

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