The King of Pain takes over SPAC

I must admit, I am a little late to the Sting fan club. As much as I have liked a lot of his work with the Police, this is the first time that I have seen him perform live. The only album of his that I own is "If On a Winter's Night" and the couple tracks he did for the obscure "A Rogue's Gallery." Perhaps that made a natural progression for me to with see him with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and not find it odd at all. In fact, I rather liked it !

Saratoga Performing Arts Center is a beautiful venue, a small open air amphitheater nestled within the Saratoga Spa State Park. The night was unusually cool and comfortable, the crowd mostly middle aged and respectful, yet joyous too. A little after 8 pm, the orchestra members started taking their places, and Sting strode out to the center of the stage, to eager applause from the crowd.

We had fine seats, just behind and slightly to the left of the soundboard, almost guaranteeing good sound and I was not disappointed. The volume was loud enough but not blasting, and the sound mix was excellent, the vocals were never overpowered by the orchestra yet you could hear the instruments clearly and the various instrumental solos were clean and clear. This was one of the best concerts acoustically that I have ever attended...

Sting is an accomplished showman, comfortable on stage and seemingly very happy to be in charge of the production. The music selections were pulled from various times in his music career, and I must admit that I was only familiar with a handful of songs but that was never a problem. As he told us, much of the fun in this project was selecting songs that would benefit by the orchestra accompaniment and overall I think he did a fine job. Some songs worked better than others, I don't think that "Roxanne" is necessarily better with the orchestra, but it was an interesting take on it and it also allowed Sting's 58 year old voice to shine. This concert was a good example of an accomplished artist using his talents to their best showing, not trying to re-create the past but moving it into the present. His voice sounded strong and was well rounded, perhaps not in the highest range he had as a young man, but still solid and melodic.

It was a pleasure listening to him, and you can't say that for many middle aged rock stars...

He interspersed little stories of his life in between the songs and talked a little bit about his personal song writing process (he likes to write the music first and then let it speak the words to him). Some songs spoke louder than others, as he told us that he was not comfortable with story of the song "Tomorrow We'll See", dealing with a transsexual's viewpoint but the song asserted itself to him and he let it flow. One other amusing story concerned a song about two foxes near the end of their lives called "End of the Game". Sting mused about fox hunting and how unpleasant it is referring to the famous Oscar Wilde quote - "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible." Then he related how when a fox invaded his chicken coop one night killing "every f*cking chicken in the coop" he could sort of see the other side of the story...

The orchestra was filled with talented artists who got to be spotlighted in various solos in many of the songs. Clarinet, trumpet, violin, they all got their moment to shine led by a very energetic conductor Steven Mercurio. In addition to the Royal Philharmonic, a small band of guitar and drums and fine blond female singer accompanied Sting on various songs, especially the Police ones. Of course, it was the more well known hits that got the crowd to its feet. It is not every day that you see a crowd of enthusiastic 40 and 50 somethings standing and singing along to "King of Pain" with such obvious happiness...

Song highlights for me were "King of Pain", "English Man in New York", "Every Breath You Take" and "Moon Over Bourbon Street".

Even though this was an orchestra show, Sting is still a rock star and at one point a flood of confetti swirled down from the ceiling nearly obliterating the orchestra from view !

After all this colorful celebration, the evening ended on a quiet note with Sting coming out just before 11 o'clock to close the evening with an a cappella version of "I Was Brought to My Senses." The man definitely knows how to run a show...

Set list
1. If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
2. Englishman In New York
3. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
4. Roxanne
5. Straight To My Heart
6. When We Dance
7. Russians
8. I Hung My Head
9. Shape Of My Heart
10. Why Should I Cry For You?
11. Whenever I Say Your Name
12. Fields Of Gold
13. Next To You
14. A Thousand Years
15. Tomorrow We’ll See
16. Moon Over Bourbon Street
17. End Of The Game
18. You Will Be My Ain True Love
19. All Would Envy
20. Mad About You
21. King Of Pain
22. Every Breath You Take
23. Desert Rose
24. She’s Too Good For Me
25. Fragile
26. I Was Brought To My Senses