A festival called Sting...
A totally crowded Incheba Hall in Bratislava saw on Sunday evening the greatest festival in the last several years. On the stage appeared a man beside whose name even superlatives lose their blaze. Sting's Sunday concert was simply a starry two hours lasting show, which is hard to forget.
Although some moments before the gig confirmed that in Slovakia it's very hard to organize such mass events. The organizers were unable to ensure proper entrance so the crowd was pushed through a very narrow door. The concert finally started after 30 minutes of delay caused by the ineptitude of the organizers.
Sting's high professionality and 100 percent performances are well known and he confirmed that with his Sunday concert again. The skeleton of the gig was made by the songs from his latest CD 'Brand New Day', but he returned to the 20-year-old tunes of his legendary band The Police as well. In some moments, especially in new songs he acted like a cold perfectionalist, maybe because the original album versions are overarranged and Sting and his band wanted to hold a colourful musical face. But balancing on the edge between rock and top-quality pop, sometimes spiced with exotic elements, reggae, arabic or latin-american music was something that the audience in Bratislava liked.
The biggest flushes of enthusiasm appeared among people especially during the hits such as 'Englishman In New York', 'Roxanne' or 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic'. An exceptional experience and the top of the concert was the final tune before the encore called 'Bring On The Night'/'When The World Is Running Down' which has turned into the improvisation that made people almost fly. And the encores made even those people sitting stand up and dance.
Sting and his band were doing fine with a relatively sober stage set, which wasn't disturbed by visual effects too much. On the other hand, on faces of all the musicians, closely connected to world-music, the pleasure of playing was clear. Besides singing, Sting was also playing his masterful instrument bass guitar, and several times he has shown that he belongs to the highest class. Nice surprise was the sound in Incheba Hall, which was clear and balanced.
It was a real festival of music, which will be hard to repeat.
(c) Novy Cas by Jozef Kollar
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