Sting 3.0

A beautiful summer evening with Sting. He unexpectedly played in the amphitheater with only three...

English bassist and singer Sting is not sparing himself even after his seventies. The name of his just-launched tour, Sting 3.0, evoked a new model, a more powerful, more effective version of the good old Sting. Visitors to Tuesday's concert at the Lochotín amphitheater in Pilsen understood the real meaning after a few minutes: the name is pronounced Sting trio.

The 17-time Grammy winner, who has sold over 100 million records worldwide, unexpectedly narrowed down his band and is now performing only with guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas. This places significantly greater demands on him, but at the same time it brings him back to the straightforward model of his most famous group, The Police, which disbanded in 1984. On Tuesday, he chose half of the songs from the repertoire of this trio. Additionally, listeners were compensated for the fact that The Police's one-off comeback from 2007 and 2008 avoided the Czech Republic.

The natural amphitheater at the Pilsen Zoo has not had a comparable world star since Robert Plant arrived eight years ago. However, major events are held regularly in Lochotín, most recently a metal festival over the weekend, whose participants had to wade through mud due to rain and firefighters even pumped out the water, wrote the iDnes.cz server.

On Tuesday, there was a minimum of mud left on the slopes. Although 13,000 people arrived for Sting's 15th concert in the Czech Republic, there were no queues anywhere and one could easily walk under the stage, where people stood on the gravel in spotless white sneakers. The weather was also good, contrary to the forecast, and it did not rain during the entire pleasantly warm evening.

The 72-year-old Sting came on stage twice, the first time at seven in the evening, when he introduced the Italian support act Giordana Angi in a cowboy hat. She did not impress. The excitement was even greater when the Englishman began his almost two-hour concert. All in white, with typically short blond hair, a tight-fitting T-shirt with a bass guitar around his neck, he immediately headed to the front rows, which he sang and cheered with the hits Message in a Bottle and If I Ever Lose My Faith in You. It was not until after nine in the evening that the lights and several effects on the large screens on the sides of the stage were added. As usual, however, with Sting, the focus was primarily on the music.

He has not been idle since last year's concert in Pardubice. During that time, Sting managed to appear in a new film by director Michel Gondry, perform with orchestras, and even perform a double concert with rocker Billy Joel. He recorded a duet with country star Dolly Parton and a sea song with Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. At a literary reading, he sang The Empty Chair, dedicated to a journalist executed by the Islamic State. In a Naples prison, he symbolically played Fragile on a guitar made by a convict from the wood of boats used to bring immigrants to Europe.

Just before the start of the tour, Sting and his wife Trudie Styler walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in France, where they arrived for the premiere of a new film by director Paolo Sorrentino, after which they rested among the Berbers in the Moroccan desert.

However, Sting has been on the road again since the end of May. And he won't stop just yet. He will spend the summer in Europe, where he will perform at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival, for example, then move to the USA to sing at the Formula 1 races in Texas, among other things. In total, he will perform about 90 concerts this year.

Sting has apparently been composing lately. In Lochotín, he presents a completely new, previously unreleased rock song, I Wrote Your Name Upon My Heart, in which the narrator "wrote your name on my heart / to remind me how long we haven't been together".Poprvé v Česku hraje naživo Voices Inside My Head, na vzájemné improvizaci stojící skladbu s výrazným groovem ještě z repertoáru The Police. Například svou výtečnou poslední desku The Bridge naopak ignoruje a většinu večera se drží osvědčených hitů ze 70. až 90. let.

Fortunately, they are not listened to. In Lochotín, you can also understand every word, so you can appreciate the lyrics. For example, the song about co-responsibility Driven to Tears, which explores how people react when they see images of suffering or misery on television. But Sting manages to make even ordinary situations, such as a woman leaving a man, special. In the individual verses of the song Never Coming Home, he describes her dissatisfaction, her search for courage and escape, after which he reverses the perspective and sings from the perspective of the abandoned.

The directly postmodern composition Synchronicity II from 1983 tells about seemingly unrelated things, in this case, the dull life in a small town and a monster slumbering in a lake, which, however, can combine into unexpected meaning from the perspective of an individual.

Sting does not reproduce any of those compositions in Lochotín down to the last detail. He always retains the most essential melody, riff or harmonic sequence, but he has slightly rearranged the items from the Police era to his current rockier expression. He practically does not use samples throughout the evening, except for electronic effects and oriental strings played from playback in the song Desert Rose. Otherwise, the trio plays everything honestly. In this performance, Sting's hits sound particularly airy, flexible and lively.

The Englishman is accompanied on drums for the first time by a thirty-nine-year-old Luxembourg native with a gold chain around his neck, Chris Maas, who has lived in London since 2006 and was in the band Mumford & Sons. He does not follow in the footsteps of Sting's jazz-sophisticated drummers, who were Vinnie Colaiuta or Manu Katché. He plays straightforwardly, rock-like, loudly, as concerts for ten thousand people and more demand.

As always, guitarist Dominic Miller is absolutely key. He has accompanied Sting since 1990 and has come up with several of his best songs. This time, he controls the same Fender Stratocaster electric guitar throughout the evening, mostly with a pick.

He uses a compressor to dynamically modify the sound, and pedal effects such as chorus, delay or wah-wah more sparingly. In several songs, he achieves vibrato using the tremolo lever and changes the pitch, subtly adding color to the hit Roxanne with a so-called bottleneck on his finger. He also has a microphone in front of him, but he only sings double parts in the choruses of Fields of Gold and Shape of My Heart.

The guitarist's greatest moment comes in the little-known Never Coming Home, where he plays a hectic, complex riff with both hands. Later, he pulls out the strings in a rock-like manner with a sharp sound design, but never rushes into a longer jazz solo, such as the one invented by keyboardist Jason Rebello on the recording from Los Angeles.

Dominic Miller is not a showman and stays in the back for most of the concert, which is why the work with the audience falls on the shoulders of the frontman. As a singing bassist, he controls the highest and lowest notes in the band the whole time.

Sting does not use a pick, this time he plays the new black Fender bass guitar with his fingers. And precisely because, unlike previous Czech concerts, he does not have a saxophonist, keyboardist, violinist, vocalist or, as was the case last time in Prague, a harmonica player, his bass lines stand out to the fullest - including the one in Roxanne. He sings one of The Police's biggest hits with his tenor voice practically as high as in 1978. His technique and fitness are still excellent.

For several songs in Lochotín, Sting leans on a high stool. He also says goodbye to the audience on it when he has an acoustic guitar brought for the second encore and plays Fragile with the so-called impact technique. He wrote the song after the shooting of a young American in Nicaragua in 1987, but it gained new meaning after the New York terrorist attacks of September 11 and even later began to be perceived as a song about the environment. "Whenever something depressing happens in the world, they start playing Fragile," he once remarked.

There is always a reason to be depressed, of course. Fortunately, Sting's concert reliably distracts everyone.

(c) Aktualne.cz by Daniel Konrad