May 9, MGM Grand Garden Arena
****
Alicia Keys hauled a band, backing singers, a large-scale stage show and two well-known support acts into the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Friday night. She need only have brought her piano.
The R&B superstar’s seven-song turn at her black Steinway midway through her set proved to be the true “concert” experience in an otherwise oversized show that began at 8 p.m. and ended close to midnight. In particular, Keys’ renditions of “Sure Looks Good,” “How Come You Don’t Call Me” and “Butterflies”—performed entirely sans accompaniment—connected the 27-year-old Manhattan native with her crowd, as her jazzy, soulful voice and dexterous fingers combined to keep the mostly full arena in a state of silent, rapturous adoration.
Openers Jordin Sparks, last season’s American Idol champion, and Ne-Yo, a product of Las Vegas’ Rancho High, couldn’t compete with that display of intimacy and talent, nor could the rest of Keys’ own two-hour program. Sparks, nursing a vocal-cord injury that recently forced her off the road, was unable to distinguish her singing characteristics, while Ne-Yo—a pop songwriter and producer building his name as a performer—inexplicably opted not to supplement his large band and dance troupe with a single vocalist, instead unnaturally harmonizing with his own recorded tracks to torpedo any chance to impress.
Keys spent much of her time dancing and changing costumes, as if she were a diva in the Mariah Carey mold rather than an old-soul vocalist and songwriter more akin to Stevie Wonder. There’s no denying the quality of her material, but on Friday there was also no doubt that the power of songs like “You Don’t Know My Name” and “Fallin’” felt muted by the extraneous stage happenings surrounding the headliner some 8,500 fans paid to see.
An encore run through recent mega-hit “No One” finally managed to successfully marry her booming voice to a full production, but it was overshadowed moments later by the night’s closer—a bone-chilling version of “If I Ain’t Got You” that had Keys back where she belongs: alone behind her grand piano, conveying her words and emotions as if she were playing in each attendee’s living room.
Photograph by Iris Dumuk