On Wednesday, April 22 I was lucky enough to see the Alicia Key's Diary concert at Radio City Music Hall, and it was a great night of music. The first performer was a new up and coming artist from Germany named Sasha. She has a very pleasant singing voice and accompanies herself on the acoustic guitar and keyboards. I liked her style of singing, and the way she played the guitar, strumming softly and yet loud enough for the audience to hear and appreciate her. The opening act was John Legend. He plays a mean piano and while he was performing Kanye West came on stage and performed with him. What a surprise! That was great because I love Kanye West and his rap style. It's tough and gritty, and it was a great beginning to the music to follow. Legend's music had a great hip-hop beat and he really can play the piano, using the volume and beat to help punctuate his songs.

             I have to say Alicia Keys was just awesome. I have always thought she is a great performer and entertainer. I am used to seeing her play the piano and accompany herself as she sings, but in this performance she danced and sang with a band, which was really different, I really liked seeing this other side of her music. The whole theme of the show was like a look back in time. The time was 1931 and she was performing at Saturday Night Uptown with Cab Calloway and the Cotton Club Band. The music was very big-band and swing like, which is great because we just finished learning about the swing style in class. It was great to see her singing soul songs that sounded old, and the orchestration made them sound old, but they were really new, with modern rhythms and beats. I read that she studied classical music and jazz, and you can really hear that in her music. She uses jazz influences even in her piano and the jazz, swing beat and rhythm, which seems like it is almost off the beat somehow, was really apparent in her music in this performance.