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      *Fox411 columnist Roger Friedman raves about Alicia Keys' performance Thursday night at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom for the fourth annual Keep A Child Alive fundraiser.

       "And what they heard may go down in contemporary music history as the night Keys sang a Bono song — 'Ms. Sarajevo' — with opera star Kathleen Battle in English and Italian," wrote Friedman. "The performance, I learned, was Keys’ idea as a tribute to Bono and the late Luciano Pavarotti. The two had recorded the song as a duet."       

       Sheryl Crow and Gwen Stefani were on hand to perform with Keys to salute Bono, the night's man of honor.  "But nothing could prepare the audience for [the Kathleen Battle] moment, not even the astounding new songs from Keys’ forthcoming album, 'As I Am,' not even Keys and Crow’s sublime take on Bono’s 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' or Keys and Stefani on the latter’s hit, 'What You Waiting For.'

       "In fact, by the time Keys got to the Battle duet, she’d performed the Marvin Gaye hit 'Inner City Blues,' R&B songs, pop/punk with Stefani and the blues with Crow on 'I Shall Believe.' All of it was revelatory including the six new songs that were so well-received the packed audience was singing along to lyrics they don’t even know to songs they’d never before heard.      

       "And the new material is extraordinary modern R&B glossed with '70s soul, from the single 'No One' — No. 1 on the charts — to the driving rocker 'Go Head,' the anthemic ballad 'Superwoman' and a pair of insanely good singles, 'That’s the Thing About Love' and 'Like You’ll Never See Me Again,' that should make the new CD a hit for many months. The latter already is being sent to radio stations as the album’s second single."      

       To read more of Friedman's review, click here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305301,00.html#2