Alicia Keys was photographed at her European tour opening night performance in Birmingham,UK, last night.Keys is currently on a world tour to promote her third studio album, “As I Am” which is a massive hit in America but has yet to break into the Top Ten in the UK.
Timesonline.co.uk reviewed her concert:
Keys was on her mettle at this 9,000-capacity arena, having postponed the first two shows of the tour because of laryngitis. Too bad that the first microphone she picked up wasn’t switched on, causing an early moment of nervous confusion that rather set the tone for the complicated, ambitious and extremely fast-moving production that followed. The show, presented as a voyage around Alicia Keys, the person and the phenomenon, began with a bit of back story. A video showed the young Keys at a gospel church service, at the end of which the minister urged her to “go out there and be great”. Inspirational stuff.
But in the scramble to do justice to her tremendous talent and the wideranging fund of ideas at her disposal, the performance took off in too many competing directions. A blizzard of verses and choruses came wedged together in bundles so slick and fast that it was like watching a nonstop cabaret medley. Keys’s black grand piano, on its hydraulic revolving platform, appeared and then disappeared behind the spaceship-like shutters at the back of the stage so often that it was as if the instrument was another member of the band.
