John Legend brings an intimate evening of songs and stories to Orlando

When John Legend brings his latest tour to the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, audiences can expect more than a traditional concert. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is trading arena spectacle for an intimate evening that blends stripped-down performances of his biggest hits with personal stories from throughout his life and career.

Legend says the concept for the show actually began with an unexpected collaboration.

“Well, it all started with Audible, the company that does the audiobooks and podcasts and things,” Legend tells Orlando Weekly. “And they started this series called ‘Words and Music’ where they encouraged artists to create a performance, a live performance, where we told whatever story we wanted to tell along with playing songs from our career or whatever inspired us.”

For Legend, that invitation sparked the idea for a show that would feel almost autobiographical — part concert, part storytelling. 

“I decided I would create basically like a little autobiography, but with all the music that’s influenced me over the years and tell stories about my own songs and inspirations behind them and just a lot of my life story that you can tell in about two hours of time,” he explains.

The first performance took place in a cozy setting far removed from the massive stages where Legend usually performs. “I performed it at Ronnie Scott’s, which is a little jazz club in London,” he says. “I loved doing it so much that I just wanted to do it more and take it on the road.”

That early experience cemented the appeal of the stripped-down format for the singer. 

“I’ve been periodically through the last few years doing a version of that show all over the world, and I love doing it,” Legend says. “It’s so much fun. I love the connection that I feel with the audience. I love the intimacy of the experience of me just being by myself on stage and talking about some of my most vulnerable moments, some of the moments that people may not know about my career and my life.”

While Legend is known for performing in arenas and large venues around the world, he says the atmosphere of this show is completely different. “It’s so beautiful, honestly. I feel really connected to everyone in the room. I can see everyone’s faces,” he says. “There’s a lot of quiet moments where you can hear a pin drop in the room and I’m sharing a lot with them.”

That intimacy also changes how audiences experience songs they may have heard countless times before. In the acoustic setting, Legend revisits hits from throughout his career with a fresh perspective. “Performing them acoustic, stripped down, gives them a new spin as well,” he says. “These songs are what they are as we’ve written them, and we wrote them at a moment in time and we all grow, we all evolve over time.”

Revisiting older songs can also bring up different emotions years later. 

“Songs I wrote 20 years ago, I’m in a different place emotionally than I was then,” Legend says. “But I still love going back to those songs and connecting to that time in my life. When you’ve gone through more life experiences, every song hits differently.”

The Florida leg of the tour is especially meaningful to the singer for personal reasons. “I have family down in Florida, so I have family members that will be at the show,” Legend says. “I’ve always had such a great reception throughout Florida, whether it’s down in Miami or in Central Florida and then out in North and Duval County.”

Because the show includes personal reflections on his career and life, Legend hopes audiences leave the theater feeling inspired by the journey he shares on stage. “I talk about the ups and downs in my career,” he says. “I talk about the struggle to be heard and to achieve a kind of goal that I set for myself in my career, and the ups and downs to that.”

He also reflects on the challenges he faced growing up and the experiences that shaped him as an artist. “I talk about the adversity I faced even when I was young, some of the issues that we dealt with in my family,” he says.

“I would love it if people walked away thinking, ‘I have this dream, whatever it is, and this show is making me inspired to go for it,’” he says. “To know that even when I faced difficulty, I could try to overcome those challenges and keep working toward the dream that I had.”

John Legend: 8 p.m. Thursday, March 19; Walt Disney Theater, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave.; drphillipscenter.org; $106-$324.

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