Q: You had to cancel a few of those shows earlier. Is everything back to where it should be?

A: Everything is spectacular, perfect. You know I did get a little bit under the weather. It sucked. Believe me, if anybody was disappointed, it was me. It’s a terrible feeling to not be able to sing to my full capacity, but it’s very important for me to protect myself.

I’m definitely in this for the long haul, and there’s nothing I’ll do to damage my voice ever. So it was important for me to take those two and just make sure I was 100 percent instead of singing on strained cords. And now I’m back, back, back, back, back.Q: You had to cancel a few of those shows earlier. Is everything back to where it should be?

A: Everything is spectacular, perfect. You know I did get a little bit under the weather. It sucked. Believe me, if anybody was disappointed, it was me. It’s a terrible feeling to not be able to sing to my full capacity, but it’s very important for me to protect myself.

I’m definitely in this for the long haul, and there’s nothing I’ll do to damage my voice ever. So it was important for me to take those two and just make sure I was 100 percent instead of singing on strained cords. And now I’m back, back, back, back, back.

Q: How about Jordin Sparks (an opening act on Keys’ tour)? Are you a fan of “American Idol”?

A: You know I’m not really someone that watches a ton of TV. In fact, I was saying the other day, I was like, “Dang. Like when was the last time I just sat down and watched some TV?” But I used to watch “American Idol” a lot with my grandmother. She really liked it. So I did get into it a little bit, but, yes, that’s what’s up.

Q: Did you ever imagine yourself playing the huge arenas when you first started out playing?

A: Oh, man, that’s like totally without question a dream in every young artist’s mind. I just never forget like one of the first concerts I went to go see. … It was huge. It had to be like, I don’t know, 50,000 people or something crazy. And I remember one of my favorite groups at the time, and still is, was Wu-Tang, and they were really big at the time, and I just remember the announcer saying that Wu-Tang was coming on stage and all 50,000 people starting screaming, “Wu-Tang.” They started chanting, and I’ll never forget how that made me feel. And I was like, “Oh my gosh. One day they’re going to chant for me like that.”

Q: I hear that you’re in preparation for doing a movie on (the piano prodigy) Philippa Schuyler. I was just wondering what led you to be inspired to do that project, and how’s it going?

A: That one is something that’s really exciting for me, because I was brought into that whole process at the very, very beginning. And Halle Berry is producing that, and she just really said that she felt that that was a part that I was born to play.

This woman is very, very interesting and having been born in the ’40s and growing up through the ’50s and ’60s during such a tumultuous time and being half black and half white and also being a classical pianist adds for a lot of interesting dynamics that I don’t think we hear a lot about, not today. (I) wasn’t personally familiar with her story until this time, and the trials and the tribulations and the stresses that went along with her trying to follow her heart, which was to play classical music.

Q: Are there plans or have you already started at all to document the tour with live albums, DVD or anything like that?

A: This tour would be a lot of fun to do that with. (Since) we just started America, we’ll probably start putting that in the works toward the end of this run. But every show we document, so that’s the cool part. And so every show is taped and recorded so it’d be kind of fun to figure out a creative way to either pick the best one or to take pieces of the greatest ones and figure out creatively how we would want to put that together.

It’s a beautiful moment to document, and that’s something I’ve really been getting into a lot, is just really recording everything that goes on, because it’s just amazing and I definitely want to always be able to look back on it.