One amazing evening down … four to go.
Rock superstar Sting returned to the familiar and intimate surroundings of Massey Hall Friday night for the first of five concerts in six nights at Toronto’s Grand Old Lady, which — if not unprecedented for the venue — certainly is rare.
With his longtime guitarist Domenic Miller and recently recruited Mumford & Sons touring drummer Christophe Maas in tow — perhaps reminding the 2,600-capacity audience in part of his first career with the Police, also a trio — Sting (a.k.a. Gordon Sumner) performed a scintillating set of familiar group and solo classics with a bit of an agenda in mind.
“I’m very happy,” the multiple Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and bassist told the Star in an exclusive pre-show interview.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Toronto, with all different kinds of combos: The Police, other bands, a play (“The Last Ship”) quite recently three or four years ago, so I’ve been here a lot, but I hope the audience is surprised by whatever I turn up with.
“I think this is a bit of a surprise,” he said about the show. “I know that people have been pre-warned but it sounds surprising — the three of us up there. I can see people’s faces saying, ‘Wow! This is not what we expected’ — and I hope, in a good way. For me, surprise is the essence of music, always.”
Well, he lived up to that promise with the first number, “Message In A Bottle,” the beloved Police chart-topper that the artist usually reserves for an encore, and it didn’t take him long to get the crowd engaged.
Dressed in a T-shirt and slacks while looking fit, trim and undeniably youthful for a guy about to turn 73 in a dozen days, a confident, relaxed and charismatic Sting quickly involved the audience in a call-and-response to the familiar line, “Sending out an S.O.S.” and by then, they were putty in his hands.
But that’s what his songs do: drawing on an almost inimitable catalogue of alluring melodies, hook-crammed choruses and relatable lyrics that date back to the Post Punk/New Wave era of the late ‘70s, Sting has transformed himself into the ultimate party guest, providing household numbers that everyone in his purview know and to which they joyfully sing along.
He also is a genius with non-lexical vocables, inserting such easily repeatable cues like “yo yo yo” at the end of the reggae-tinged “Walking On The Moon” or “wha-oh-ohs” to perk up the ending of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” that encourage participation but don’t tax the brain, and he employed them to full effect and the delight of his audience on several numbers Friday night.
But he’s also not interested in simply being a jukebox, as he explained pre-concert.
“My job every night is to play songs that I may have written 40 years ago with the same curiosity and passion — and looking for incremental changes that I can make, so I’m not remaking a record as if it’s a museum artifact,” Sting said.
“It’s not that — it’s a living, breathing organism and I’m looking for those little changes. My musicians have to be doing the same thing — like a jazz musician would treat a song: play the head, and then you’re searching for something else. It could be quite small,” he continued.
“Domenic could find it some nights, Christoph another and me, so we’re always looking for those little things so the song can evolve.
“That’s important.”
Some of the songs he chose to perform were stretched out — “Driven To Tears” received an enthusiastic workout that involved a lengthy and inventive Miller guitar solo and some tempo changes — and some of the more elaborate arrangements of “An Englishman In New York” and “Desert Rose” were stripped of their ornate arrangements, although nothing was lost in the delivery or the translation.
It was a risk that the maestro wanted to take in a trio setup he called “a dangerous format.”
“There’s no safety net. You can’t hide. You make a mistake and it’s fully out there,” Sting chuckled shortly after sound check. “But the amount of air around each instrument, space, clarity — is really wonderful for musicians who want a challenge.
“All three of us want to work harder. There’s nowhere to escape to, but we’re all up for the challenge of it and it’s exciting to reduce the songs to their bare bones. They’re still sturdy enough to stand up. And in many ways, I ask the audience to fill in what’s missing in their imaginations, or enjoy the sparsity of the sound. It’s powerful.
“I don’t think anything is robbed from them by this treatment. I think, if anything, the structure is sacrosanct. It still works,” he said.
It certainly did Friday night, and Miller — who is rarely as exposed in Sting’s numerous band configuration as he is in a trio — was something of a revelation. He would occasionally mimic Police guitarist Andy Summers in a chord here or there to offer tribute during the group numbers, and was something of an acrobat during songs like “Mad About You” and “All This Time.”
There was also a moment in the show where he teased the memory of his boss with the intro to “Wrapped Around Your Finger.”
“Domenic’s been with me for 35 years,” he told the crowd. “I call him ‘The Archivist,’ in that he remembers every song that I’ve ever written. He remembers the parts and the chords and I don’t. I forget them. So, he reminds me of the songs I’ve written.”
With a visual backdrop of spotlights and fog and a screen that occasionally functioned as a Cinescope of sorts, Sting was at the top of his game with his distinctive voice. There were times when he sustained a note for 10 or 15 seconds that was almost a marvel to behold. He also introduced a new song into the mix — “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart),” which he said in the interview may lead to an album along similar lines.
“It’s a very direct rock track, although it’s more sophisticated than it seems, at first,” he explained. “But I wanted to put it out as a little flagship. Every night I’m listening to what we’re doing and looking for inspiration for further songs. So yeah, I’d love to make an album like that.”
With such expected run-throughs of megahits like “Roxanne,” “Fragile” and “Every Breath You Take” receiving a new coat of paint, the assembly played along and was wildly receptive to the new arrangements — some of them subtle — but the cheering and standing with cellphones poised and recording underscored their enthusiasm for a well-performed, 105-minute, 20-song set.
For Sting, who returns Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday (Sept. 25) to the Massey Hall stage, this was his first return to the venue since the significant renovations a few years ago.
And he liked what he saw.
“Massey Hall is somewhere I have great fondness for,” said Sting a few hours before showtime. “I know the history of the place. I know who’s played here before me. It’s part of my own history. So, I’m very surprised at how much work they’ve done here. It’s pretty funky. It’s still somewhat august as an institution, but this is very posh.”
