R&B singer Alicia Keys returned to the Montreux Jazz festival, giving a high-energy 90-minute concert mixing early hits with recent tracks from her chart-topping “As I Am” album.

“One of my all time favourite things is coming to the Montreux Jazz Festival. There is something different in the air here,” the Grammy Award-winning American singer and pianist told the crowd on Thursday night.

“There is so much incredible talent here,” she added. (more…)

In a crowd-pleasing mix of reggae and R&B, Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys and opener Stephen Marley brought down the house at the Marcus Amphitheatre Tuesday night as Summerfest reached its midpoint.

Keys appeared onstage in true diva fashion and captivated in curve-hugging black pants and a leather vest, beginning with several upbeat songs from her latest album, “As I Am.”

She then took to the piano to show off her instrumental talent and soulful voice on “Diary,” “How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore” and “Like You’ll Never See Me Again.” (more…)

Alicia Keys has aspirations of being a rock star, belting over screaming guitars. She also sees herself as a jazz chanteuse, elegantly dressed while scat-singing and improvising melodies on her beloved piano. Then she wants to do more acting — some drama, maybe comedy — and establish more charitable efforts. The list of things she wants to accomplish goes on and on.

But it’s not as if the pop superstar with the seductive, camera-ready face hasn’t done a lot already. At 27, with a career that’s barely a decade old, she owns 11 Grammys and four multiplatinum albums. Along with Beyonce, she is one of the most visible, lauded pop performers of her generation. Still, Keys wants to confound your expectations of her — especially in the realm of music. (more…)

Before taking the stage at Verizon Center last night, Alicia Keys met with some local fans — a half-dozen teen girls, all singers in the Washington Performing Arts Society’s Children of the Gospel Choir. At-large D.C. Council member Kwame Brown’s office set up the meeting (an echo of last year, when more than 100 area girls got to meet and pose for pics with Beyoncé). The choir singers were invited after two of them testified at a May 10 D.C. Council hearing about how music boosted their self-confidence and academic achievement.

The girls sang a quick song; Keys, in black skinny jeans and cropped leather jacket, clapped and told them they have beautiful voices. Brown Chief of Staff Irma Esparza says it’s all about “being able to instill kids living in D.C. with some hope, letting them know there are opportunities out here and you can do whatever it is you want to do.”

Alicia Keys wants to follow in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and adopt a brood of multi-racial children. The singer insists she loves kids and working alongside South African orphans in 2006 charity movie We Are Together made her broody to have children of her own.

But the 28-year-old insists motherhood is on the backburner for now, while she pursues her singing career. Speaking to WENN at a special screening of the movie in New York City on Thursday night, Keys said, “I’ve always loved kids. Kids are so important. It’s important to nurture and spend time with them and listen to them.

“I’m not ready to be a mom. But (adoption) is something that is important to consider. That’s what I really admire about Angelina. I think it’s beautiful the way she embraces children of the world.” And she insists she would like to create a family of different cultures, like Jolie: “We are all one. We’re not as separate as we oftentimes think. So I possibly would (adopt), when I’m more in the motherhood stage of my life.”

Early in her concert at the Palace on Friday night (June 6), Alicia Keys complained to the crowd about managers and record company executives who “tried to get me to shake it more and take off more.”

She’s managed to do just fine in her career without succumbing to those demands — to the tune of 25 million albums sold and 11 Grammy Awards won. And with her tidy, one-hour and 45-minute show, Keys proved that classy could still be just as captivating as more flesh-baring spectacles by chart neighbors such as Beyonce and Mariah. (more…)

In a time of plunging record sales, singer, songwriter, pianist and actress Alicia Keys remains a star. She’s got the numbers and awards to prove it.

More than 5 million copies of the 27-year-old singer’s latest album, “As I Am,” have been sold since its November release. “No One,” a single from the album, won two Grammy awards. Keys also performed for this year’s Grammy awards broadcast, singing a duet with Frank Sinatra by means of one of his vintage filmed performances.Keys, a beautiful and truly talented young woman, is on her way to having a sustained career of the kind Sinatra had. (more…)

Six years and a couple hundred concerts later, Alicia Keys has not forgotten her disastrous 2002 Essence Music Festival debut.

A deafening, Superdome-sized silence greeted her the night of July 4, 2002. Nothing — not her hype man, the opening “Alicia Keys Overture,” her flurry of piano, song and dance, a tepid cover of the Doors’ “Light My Fire” — connected with the discriminating Essence audience. In a final insult, the curtain dropped before she performed “Fallin’,” her breakthrough hit. (more…)

Among today’s young female stars, Alicia Keys — 11-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter, budding actress, anti-AIDS activist and all-around pop-culture role model — would seem one of the least likely to have a nervous breakdown.

But there was a time, about a year and a half ago, when Keys could have easily imagined becoming a tabloid statistic. Frayed by the whirlwind pace of her multifaceted career and the illness of a close family member she won’t identify (the relative died in 2007), she was feeling “a little confused and out of it,” Keys says.

“I would be someplace, in some situation, and I would say to myself: ‘This is how it happens. This is how people crack.’ I would actually see why some of the greatest artists have gone through crazy things, because of who’s around them or what influences are pushed on them. Or because you’re so overtired that you do that one last thing and end up passing out. (more…)

In order to find herself, she had to leave the music industry, take a trip down the Nile and learn how to tear down the walls she’d spent most of her life building.

It’s early Friday evening in Copenhagen and Alicia Keys is about to emit some deeply bizarre sounds. These trills and jabbers will loosen her vocal cords, exercise her diaphragm and guard against any accidentally bizarre sounds when she takes the stage at the Falconer Salen, an ultramodern concert hall carved into a boxy luxury hotel. Her valet, a skinny guy named Francis, enters her dressing room, adjusts the height of an electric Yamaha keyboard, then disappears to get his boss some potato-spinach soup. The decor suggests a mail-order catalogue called Diva Comfort Depot: Floral-printed scarves enshroud floor lamps; scented candles glow atop ottomans draped with light-purple fabric; dainty white ramekins cradle dried fruits; and in the corner, a humidifier puffs out little steam clouds of calm. The tableau is a portable monument to mood. On tour, every night, this is where Keys goes “to get my head right.”

(more…)