Back to Bass Tour: 2011/12

Sting dominates Košice with his hits...

On Saturday evening, the packed Steel Arena in Košice welcomed Sting and his five bandmates as their own.

The eastern Slovak metropolis was one of the stops of the Back To Bass Tour 2011/12. The 61-year-old musician came to Košice from Rouen, France, where he performed on Thursday.

Sting has been a long-time figure on the world music scene and his charisma filled the concert arena from the first song. He composed the concert setlist from songs from the Police repertoire and from his solo performances.

The second was 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' from the album 'Ghost In The Machine' from the successful era of the Police; followed by the hit 'Englishman In New York' from the album 'Nothing Like The Sun', which was released in October 1987.

Sting returned to his solo album 'Ten Summoner's Tales' three more times during the evening in the form of the megahit 'Fields Of Gold' and the songs 'Seven Days' and 'Shape Of My Heart'.

Sting's discography is also known to Slovak fans and the audience also reacted to other songs 'I Hung My Heart', 'The End Of The Game', 'Heavy Cloud No Rain', 'The Hounds Of Winter' and especially another megahit 'Desert Rose'.

There were also famous songs from the Police era, including 'Message In A Bottle', 'Wrapped Around Your Finger', 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da', 'Roxanne' and 'King Of Pain'.

Even Košice is not without an encore, and Sting returned twice, adding probably the biggest hit from the Police era, 'Every Breath You Take' from the album 'Synchronicity', 'Next To You' and the solo song 'Fragile' from the album 'Nothing Like The Sun'.

Good sound throughout the more than two-hour performance dispelled fans' concerns about the acoustic shortcomings of ice rinks; the decent stage lighting was done without unnecessary effects, which further highlighted the artist's personality and especially his music.

From Košice, Sting's steps are heading to Ostrava, where he will perform on Monday, November 19, two days later in the Polish city of Łódź and on November 23 in Krasnodar, Russia. The entire tour will end on December 15 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (*2.10.1951) - that's Sting's birth name - was a co-founder of the band Police in January 1977, in which he played bass guitar and sang. A year later they released their first album 'Outlandos D'Amour'. Two more albums 'Reggatta De Blanc' (1979) and 'Zenyatta Mondatta' (1980) topped the English charts. They broke up in 1986, released five studio albums and had a total of 18 songs in the charts, five of which reached number one.

As a solo artist, Sting has released ten studio albums; the tenth, Symphonicities, was released in July 2010. He has had 22 songs on the singles chart. As part of the Broken Music Tour, he performed at the Artmedia stadium in Bratislava's Petržalka on June 21, 2006. He returned to Bratislava last year on June 29 as part of the Symphonicity Tour 2010/2011. The recording of this tour was released on the DVD Sting Live In Berlin in November 2010. In October 2011, the compilation The Best Of 25 Years was released.

(c) HNonline