Alicia Keys ‘on fire’ during soulful Toronto arena performance

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Friday night

RATING: **** (out of four)

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This girl is on fire!

Alicia Keys, who I’ve watched evolve over the years from a too-static piano player who eventually attempted choregraphed dance moves, has turned into a top-notch and blessedly natural performer judging from the Scotiabank Arena stop of her Keys to the Summer tour on Friday night.

From the opening a capella vocals on Fallin’, Keys — decked out in a head-to-toe green sequined outfit with matching sunglasses (even her Yamaha piano was shiny) — and her tight five-piece-band never really let up in terms of focus and form.

Playing on an in-the-round stage in the centre of the floor with two huge video screens on either side, helped display her confident soulfulness as she moved between playing the piano standing up and moving on her two long catwalks.

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The song highlights were many, including You Don’t Know My Name, Karma, Un-Thinkable (with a beautiful black-and-white video of two young male dancers in the water), Underdog, Holy War, and My Boo (which included an incredible male dancer who popped out of the top of white staircase at the end of one of the catwalks), in the first set.

But it was the second set that really saw Keys and company hit their emotional stride with A Woman’s Worth, Superwoman, Like You’ll Never See Me Again and the three-in-a-row standouts Girl on Fire, Empire State of Mind, and a cover of the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams, plus the set-ending No One before the two-hour-plus show came to a close with the encore number If I Ain’t Got You.

Beforehand, I was lucky enough to be invited to a Soul Session with Keys down in the Platinum Lounge where she spoke during a Q&A with fans and admitted one of the hardest things in her life was her Grammy performance on two pianos.

“That and childbirth,” the mom-of-two said with a grin. “Childbirth was great but it’s work.”