Alicia Keys had done it all in her career.
From winning 17 Grammy Awards to several multi-platinum albums. However, she recently performed on the Broadway stage for the first time, PEOPLE reported.
“So excited that you’re here with us tonight for the very first Encore Sessions,” Keys said on Friday. “Please give it up for the cast and the crew and the musicians. Honestly, that’s the first time that I joined them on stage for that. That felt real good just now. So this was a really beautiful thing.”
“What we wanted to do was bring you through a special experience. Something that truly never happens in the Shubert Theater,” she continued. “This would be officially my first time on a Broadway stage, and you’re here with me, so I want to say thank you so much.”
Keys also shared tense moments she had with director Michael Greif and book writer Kristoffer Diaz.
“I have to tell you, I gave them some hell about some stuff. And I got to tell you that Michael Grief was always right!” she laughed. “I was like, ‘We are not doing that, I’m telling you, we are not.’ And then he’s like, ‘Just try it?’ and I was like, ‘Ugh!’ And then we’d try it and I’d be like, [disappointedly] ‘You’re right.’ “
Keys recalled a scene involving the mother-daughter that they argued over.
“I envisioned it that Jersey and Ali would have this stand-off with this song, trying to convince each other that they were more of this than the other,” Keys said. “We worked on this for a couple of workshops, and I thought this was working. And then when it wasn’t working, Michael told me I had to write another song. I was pretty bummed out. But it was beautiful because he pushed me to be able to write what I consider my first mus
A second performance of Keys’ Encore Sessions took place Saturday, Sept. 27.
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