Sting 3.0

Sting at Arena Zagreb enjoyed the brave trio performance and pulled songs out of his hat...

Sting and his two sidekicks proved to be even more of a top instrumentalist, and of course a singer, and they were so good that it was often unbelievable how just three people could "fill" the sound and play a diverse concert.

Just a year and a half after his last performance at Arena Zagreb, Sting once again attracted around 15,000 people to the hall, despite the fact that he was also playing in Ljubljana two nights later. It was a brave decision by the organizers, because usually during the tourneys people "rest" and miss the cities where the concerts were held previously, but the stands were full on both levels, and the floor was densely packed all the way to behind the mixing console.

The biggest difference was that on the current "3.0" tour, Sting is performing in a trio formation, with only guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, so he has returned to the Police era, at least formally. This was also the biggest advantage and interesting thing about the concert, because in a little over a hundred minutes of performance with 22 songs, he showed the joy of playing in a small combo, where there is no hiding, long solos or sections of backing singers, keyboards, percussionists and "filling" time. On Monday night, Sting, with his two sidemen, proved to be even more of a top instrumentalist, and a singer of course, and they were so good that it was often incredible how only three people could "fill" the sound like this and play a diverse concert. With additional effort, we would say, but also with great material and arrangements of songs in which everyone had to give their best.

This year, Sting also introduced some Police songs, such as the opening "Voices Inside My Head", which he hadn't played since 2006, "Never Coming Home" from 2012 or "Synchronicity II" from 2018, wanting to refresh a repertoire that has so many hits that he might have gotten bored. "I know how to start a concert, I know how to end it, but I don't know what to do in the middle," he said at one point (and of course he was lying), so to make things even more interesting, they played a dozen songs in the middle of the performance by drawing the names of the songs from pieces of paper in a hat, which makes every concert different. Sting did everything to make it more interesting for him, and for the audience - although, I think, they got tired of some of the lesser-known songs, because they only know the hits - and as a top bassist, he played a concert where his work on four strings alone would show the passion for music of a pop star and author who is in that position by no means accidental.

(c) Večernji list by Slavni Glazbenik