July 26, 2012, 11:01 Culture

Bass in rib

Sting performed at the Olympic Stadium

Yaroslav Zabaluev close

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Sting performed at the Olimpiyskiy as part of the “Back To Bass” tour and demonstrated that in his seventies he had not lost either his performing form or his experimental spirit.

Sting's current summer tour is part of a tour dedicated to his 60th anniversary. Having turned seventy in October last year, the singer decided to shake things up and pick up the bass guitar again. He already did something similar in 2006; Then, after the “Broken Music” tour, a reunion of his band The Police happened.

This time the musical thought of the born Gordon Sumner moved in a different direction. Continuing the line of the Symphonicities program , he chose many songs that were not obvious to fans for the setlist of the first part of the tour, many of which were included in his last original album, Sacred Love, released in 2003.

However, Sting greatly changed the Moscow program.

Only the concept of the concert itself remained unshakable.

Sting took the stage at the Olympic Stadium accompanied by his constant companion, guitarist Dominic Miller, virtuoso drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, keyboardist David Sanchez, backing vocalist Jo Laurie and violinist Peter Tickell. Actually, the main attraction was the presence in the standard structure of a rock band of a man with a violin, who from time to time also picked up a mandolin. For the leader of the group, in turn, the challenge was to weave quiet instruments, not inherently intended for rock music, into his golden hits (a significant part of the program consisted of songs by The Police).

On the opening “All This Time” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” one could get the feeling that the sound structure, supported by a weighty rhythm section and fragile keyboard and violin passages, was slightly moving apart. This was followed by the hit “Englishman In New York”, which enlivened the audience (rapped out by the singer almost in the manner of a counting rhyme), and after that the performance gained momentum with each song.

The musicians deliberately broke the ending of “Seven Days”, and “Hounds Of Winter” turned from an uplifting anthem into what it was originally intended to be - a fragile song about love.

In addition, each of the band members received a solo appearance, both in individual songs and during a small jam held towards the end. The duel of the violin with the bass and drums seemed to take the breath away even from the silent inhabitants of the stands who were in a permanent slumber.

In general, Sting is a brilliant frontman (and this is not news), but he only managed to bring the sitters to their feet on the encore “Every Breath You Take” from 1983.

As expected, towards the end, some of the rawness of the arrangements already looked like an elegant move, combining all the artist’s favorite incarnations - pop imposingness, symphonic sweep and “fatal” brutality. The guest performer coped with the task brilliantly, but this, in general, did not come as a surprise, given the experience, which included not only performing with the Russian National Orchestra, but also Sting’s duets, for example, with Lady Gaga .

The musical miracle lay elsewhere. The fact is that many people don’t like Sting because he successfully went from a semi-underground musician to a respectable gentleman with houses in Tuscany and Los Angeles, vulgar charitable activities and Madonna in the phone book. However, about halfway through the concert, somewhere between “Hounds of Winter” and “Roxanne,” Sumner suddenly changed.

From an honored artist and a well-fed bourgeois, he turned into a person for whom music is still a kind of prayer, an eternal source of joy and inspiration (this is how he described this feeling in his book “Broken Music”).

However, Sting doesn’t need any extra sentiment from admiring journalists, because on the women’s T-shirts printed for this tour, his motto is emblazoned: “No Religion. Only Sex and Music.”