Alicia Keys greets cast members in rehearsals for the North American tour of Hell's Kitchen.Hell's Kitchen/Supplied
Thirty years ago, a wunderkind burst onto the music scene in New York. A classically trained pianist with an ear for R&B, she graduated from high school at the age of 16 – at the top of her class, no less – and immediately started studying at Columbia University. When she dropped out of postsecondary studies, it wasn’t because she couldn’t handle the pressure, but because making music full-time was the obvious path forward.
It should come as no surprise that Alicia Keys has since gone on to create a Broadway musical heavily inspired by her own life. Known for hits such as Fallin’, If I Ain’t Got You and No One, Keys is singular as an auteur: Her evocative lyrics, smoky voice and classical sensibilities combine to create a sound not quite in the world of hip-hop or soul, but instead a genre all its own.
Maya Drake stars as Ali.Marc J. Frankin/Supplied
Her biography, too, offers compelling stage fodder. In her 45 years she’s risen from Manhattan Plaza, the subsidized residential complex in Hell’s Kitchen where she spent much of her childhood, to stages and arenas around the world. With a book by Kristoffer Díaz and direction by Michael Greif (Rent, Next to Normal, Dear Evan Hansen), the musical largely takes place in the storied – and 46-storeyed – apartment building of Keys’s youth.
Ahead of Hell’s Kitchen’s touring stop in Toronto, scheduled to play at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre until Oct. 25, The Globe and Mail spoke with Keys over Zoom to discuss her remarkable career – and the songs audiences might recognize in her jukebox musical.
Fall theatre season bets big on made-in-Canada productions
You served as BlackBerry’s global creative director for one year, helping to launch the BlackBerry 10 in 2013. Given that, have you seen Canadian director Matt Johnson’s satirical bio-dramedy BlackBerry?
I haven’t. Should I see it?
That’s so funny. I was there for such a specific era of BlackBerry. I’ll have to check that out.
Keys receives a gift during rehearsals from the cast of the North American tour.Hell's Kitchen/Supplied
In a somewhat atypical move for a living artist with a jukebox musical, you were highly involved in the creation of Hell’s Kitchen, from the story and music to even being in the room for auditions. Why was it important for you to have your fingerprints on every part of the production?
This is 100 per cent my vision. No one came to me and was like, ‘Hey, let’s adapt this and that.’ It was a story I felt was an important one to tell. I wanted to capture the timelessness of Hell’s Kitchen, the spirit of it. You can’t write about this very specific place if you don’t understand it.
How did you feel about recontextualizing some of your own back catalogue into a new story? The show is semi-autobiographical – it follows a teenager named Ali through her coming-of-age as a musician in Hell’s Kitchen – but these songs tell a different story now than they did when you wrote them.
That’s one of my favourite parts of the show. The songs were really designed to propel the story forward, and to get a deeper understanding of these characters. You hear songs you know with voices you’ve never heard. If I Ain’t Got You becomes a duet between a father and a daughter. No one would have ever thought of that, myself included, when the song was written.
Fallin’ is sung completely by the father, so it’s a male voice singing. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a man sing Fallin’ outside of this show. It’s not a normal occurrence. I find it’s really exciting for the audience when they hear it, because they don’t know it’s coming.
I sometimes ask myself if maybe this is why those songs were written – to eventually represent these deeper things. It’s really special to think about why a song comes to life, and what it’s meant to portray.
Kennedy Caughell as Jersey and Desmond Sean Ellington as Davis.Marc J. Frankin/Supplied
As an artist who partially rose to prominence for her skills as a pianist, what kind of piano do you keep in your home?
I love that question. It’s the same Steinway baby grand I was offered when I got signed to Columbia Records. At that time in my teenage life, it was the most beautiful piano I’d ever seen – I’d never seen anything more special. My manager was like, ‘No, you’re not signing for a piano.’ Thank God my manager had that good sense. I think my young mind was just overwhelmed by the fact that it was so gorgeous.
But eventually that piano did end up becoming something I owned, and it’s been with me ever since. My oldest son, Egypt, learned how to play on that piano. It’s still in my house today, and I really love it. It’s very special.
This interview has been edited and condensed.