In Denver, Bareilles delivers a powerful performance spanning personal turmoil and joyful discoveries.

Sara Bareilles seems like a fun person to grab coffee with. The 46-year-old singer-songwriter, musician and actor has secured two Grammys, four Emmys and three Tonys. As impressive and intimidating as that is, she gives off charming, funny, normal-person energy on stage.

On Sunday, Oct. 4, Bareilles stopped at the Bellco Theatre on her Good Grief Tour. She playfully engaged with the audience, calling out a 9-year-old sitting in the front row. “I’m going to say ‘vagina’ sometimes,” she warned her.

Bareilles also noted the screens on either side of the stage, waving to herself after expressing how beautiful the venue was. She brought that goofiness and gratitude into a performance centered on grief.

Seven years after her sixth studio album, “Amidst the Chaos,” Bareilles released her latest project, “Good Grief,” this past August. The record delves into devastating personal losses, infertility struggles and feelings of isolation while still finding glimmers of hope through it all.

The artist lost her manager and best friend, Chad Joseph, and fellow actor Gavin Creel. On “Good Grief,” she wades through the despair of saying goodbye to loved ones too soon.

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“Nobody we love stays. How do you make peace with that very scary reality?” she asked her audience. “That has been the beauty and excavation of this album.”

She performed her latest album alongside her older classics, a Whitney Houston cover and plenty of stories that pulled back the curtain on her songs.

A large fabric canopy covered the set like a whimsical tent. Tree shadows danced across the material as the introductory music began. The fabric was lifted to reveal the wooden framing of a house where Bareilles’ band stood. The structure seemed to represent Bareilles’ emotional journey: a solid foundation beginning to rebuild after violent upheaval.

Bareilles walked onstage in a gray felt fedora and long coat. Her outfit evoked the 2016 Christian-girl autumn aesthetic, somehow timeless and cool.

Under the canopy, now above the stage like clouds, Bareilles sang “Home.” Lamps glowed across the set as she wrapped the audience in intimate warmth with twinkling keys. Dark red lights and fog transitioned the set into a moodier realm with “Still Crying.” Bareilles’ range and control were superhuman — she pulled back for soft emotion and exploded into full-throated belting.

“I was just crying but now I’m smiling. See?” Bareilles told the audience, wearing a huge grin. While she traverses difficult personal experiences in her music, she never lets them break her.

Living in grief

Bareilles explained that she created a grief hotline for people to share their stories about sorrowful times in their lives and the hope they’re clinging to. She received thousands of messages from fans and played some of them throughout the show.

She told the story of one of the most aching tracks on her new album, “Just a Kid.” The song is a dedication to her 20-year friendship with Joseph, who died in 2020 of lung cancer. Bareilles had the idea for the song two years after his death. She was carrying groceries when it came to her, so she set them down and immediately started singing into her Voice Memos app.

“As I say your name and I kiss the sky / And I feel no space between you and I,” she sang as she played piano under soft blue lights. “I smile and weep, ’cause I know you’re there / This one’s for my best friend, and he’s everywhere.”

It was beautiful to watch her unleash so much passion and love for someone she missed dearly.

A voicemail from a woman dealing with grief played. She said that the pain is “evidence that something mattered.” Audience members sniffled, clearly overcome by the emotional performance. Bareilles discussed how she wrote “A Love Story” in Colorado after seeing the late poet and activist Andrea Gibson perform at the Paramount Theatre. She said that moment changed her life and left her deeply inspired.

“They left us an instruction manual on how to heal this broken world,” Bareilles said of Gibson. Bareilles showed the audience how to find glimpses of joy through waves of grief.

Divine feminine rage

“Now, 9-year-old, remember I was going to talk about vaginas?” Bareilles said, leaning down to the young girl in the front again.

Bareilles explained that she loves her vagina and the fact that it brought her “divine feminine rage.” She began writing “Hands Off My Body,” a protest song for bodily autonomy, after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in Iran and the subsequent Women, Life, Freedom movement. The song’s importance grew with the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the atrocities of the Cornell 7. Bareilles said people need to find ways to take their rage and turn it into action. Her way of making a difference is music.

“Heartland” also delights in defiant protest. Bareilles wrote from the point of view of the Statue of Liberty and the U.S. Constitution. She explained that they’re flawed and created by flawed people but hold “ideals worthy of pursuit.”

“I think it’s OK to love a place that is broken in some ways, and we have to love it into something better,” she said. Her voice rang out through the venue over marching keys as warm orange lights projected the shadows of miniature trees.

With haunting harmonies, “Ladies in a Line” explored her experience with infertility. Through steady drums and erratic keys, Bareilles sang a jazzy song playfully poking fun at anxiety.

Oct. 4 marked Bareilles’ first wedding anniversary, so she was excited to sing the romantic single “Idiot Heart,” which she wrote with her husband and two friends. She instructed the audience to “woo” as they did the wave across the venue. “We’re going to treat this song like a drinking game,” she joked. The fabric canopy waved above her in rainbow hues as she sang about falling fast and hard.

Her solo performance of “Gravity” from her 2007 album “Little Voice” was simply breathtaking. She unleashed a delicate, crisp soprano infused with the weight of a toxic relationship. Bareilles concluded her “Good Grief” portion of the show with a heartfelt performance of “Forever.”

“You’re all healed and you’ll never feel pain again,” she said, smiling.

Bareilles turned Bellco into an ’80s dance club with flashing neon lights for a cover of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” As the audience sang along, she performed some of her older favorites, including “Love Song,” “King of Everything” and “Brave.”

A bucket-list moment

Bareilles kicked off a three-song encore with “She Used to Be Mine” from the musical Waitress, which she composed.

It’s arguably the show’s most beautiful song and its most emotionally and sonically complex. The main character Jenna — whom Bareilles has played on Broadway — reaches her rock bottom when she comes to terms with carrying her deadbeat husband’s baby and continuing her waitressing job in a small town.

Waitress is my favorite musical, and I checked off a bucket-list item by watching Bareilles perform the song live. She effortlessly flew through her range, belting the plaintive lyrics about a woman who has given up on wishing for more from life. It broke my heart and pieced it back together in the best way. Bareilles showed her ability to pour her soul into the heaviest songs and return to reality with a cute smile at the end.

In a holy trinity of introspection, Bareilles wrote “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” with Brandi Carlile and text from Gibson. She spoke about a grief group she joined and the important concept they stressed. “You can go to all of those dark places, but you have to come back because the village needs you,” she said.

The song explores the beauty of experiencing the full range of life, even when it’s hard. Bareilles sang, “Want to feel it all / Salt then sour, then sweet.” She curated a beautiful evening of sitting in grief, then finding a way back.