Brand New Day: 1999/01

Stylish songs with Sting at Königsplatz...

The truly great atmosphere on Friday evening initially spread only over the first half of Königsplatz, where thousands of fans had gathered to enjoy Sting under the open sky. And this wasn't primarily due to the fact that a significant portion of his gigs took place in daylight and the lighters went out during songs like 'Fields of Gold'.

It was the volume that robbed the back rows of the feeling of being there live. While at some concerts, you're happy for any quiet interlude that doesn't blow your ear canals out, Sting's performance was just pleasant near the stage. Further back, however, it remained quiet, while the sound faded into nothingness somewhere between pepper steaks and poorly poured beers.

For two hours, the Brit and his band once again demonstrated their stage strengths: Sting uses his characteristic, razor-sharp voice with perfect intonation, and even live, he takes his often demanding melodies and rhythms in stride.

The latter, in particular, repeatedly poses a challenge for the experienced band. There are no technical stumbling blocks, and the necessary transparency in the instrumentation, combined with a good sound mix, ensures that the beautiful structures of the songs remain recognizable throughout.

As expected, Sting's song palette ranged from still-current numbers like 'Desert Rose' and 'Brand New Day' to numbers from 'Ten Summoner's Tales' and back to the 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' era.

Pleasant: The songs really only came across on stage in the way they could be realized with the crew present. There was 'Fill Her Up,' which veers from country to lush gospel, in a somewhat stripped-down, but not overly amplified version. The stage design, created solely by some lighting effects, and the Brit's shy conversation with his fans were also sparse.

By the time 'Englishman In New York' began, the atmosphere had finally reached the back rows, which had been neglected in terms of sound. And so, until the end, after several encores in a typically British, rugged climate, the crowd finally did what, with a more lush sound, would probably have been the case from the start: warming up with dancing!

(c) Münchner Merkur by Judith Fink

The voice that makes us blissful...

It is this voice, this easily cutting, reedy nasal sound which seems to come somewhere from the space behind the larynx. A voice which is one in a 100,000. He may have got the name Sting because during the old Police-days he was famous for clothing in the colours of a wasp but it is and remains the voice which stings into the eardrum. This fluid hoarse falsetto conjures blissful smiles in ten thousand faces, of places and recollections from bygone times, almost forgotten parties, and night drives with the sound from turned up speakers. There one can be on the enormous Konigsplatz still so far towards the back: the voice bridges the distance. The contact with the superstar is simply so intimate, because it has been embodied for a long time in the personal memory of every listener.

Sting alias Gordon Sumner had arrived with a band of excellent professionals who built on the Konigsplatz a stage the size of a mid-office block. He left his mark however with controlled restraint, and with nonchalance ripening the evening. With little fuss or lightshow he joined his already legendary songs with the rather complex compositions of the recent times: he pastiched 'Moon over Bourbon Street' in a shuffle-rhythm with 'Satchmos' voice, 'Message in a Bottle' survived the inevitable lighter-sea of lights and generally built stable bridges between kitsch and class.

He was always a bridge-builder. Between engaged art and big business, between text-poetry and four-four, between pop, rock, jazz and reggae. But the basic item between all these columns remains the voice, which is situated as strangely in the slow motion speed taking off over the fast rhythms, which connects clockwork like with the solo from his trumpeter and then from full volume at the end of a line tilts away and upward. A quality-product, that, no matter what he sang, made the crowds on the Platz drunk: peaceful, happily and a little bit high - because that was just how it should be.

(c) Suddeutsche Zeitung by Geseko v. Lupke/Translated by Isabell Brigel