Sting: My Songs Tour: 2021 - 2023

Sting, who visited Lithuania for the eighth time, delighted the crowd of fans: he ended the concert with words of support for Ukraine...

No one will accuse British singer Sting of paying little attention to his fans in Lithuania. On Sunday evening, the music star held a concert at the Kaunas "Žalgiris" arena - this is his eighth visit to our country.

For the first time, Gordon Matthew Sumner (that is Sting's real name) played in Lithuania 21 years ago - at that time his concert was held at the Vilnius "Žalgiris" stadium, and the very fact that a star of such rank was visiting our country seemed somewhat unusual.

Today, Lithuanians can no longer be surprised by the performances of foreign stars, the audience can even be called somewhat spoiled, but the love for Sting seems to be unfading.

On Sunday evening, over 8 thousand spectators gathered at the arena - this is even more than three years ago, when Sting performed in the same arena.

The impression is that the singer's audience is somewhat older and prefers comfort. All the tickets for sitting are snatched up, but the audience for this concert does not rush to stand. The majority of those who came to the concert are no longer in their twenties or thirties. The audience is the kind for whom sitting, rather than standing near the stage, simply seems much more comfortable.

In the summer in Warsaw, where Sting performed at the National Stadium, about 35 thousand spectators gathered for a Sting concert - the singer, who will turn 71 in a week, still has a huge army of fans around the world.

The former leader of the band "The Police", who has won as many as 17 prestigious "Grammy" awards, already belongs to that category of musicians who do not have to prove anything to anyone.

A performer who owns homes on several continents, collects luxurious works of art, and has performed in many prestigious venues could behave like many of his peers, going on tour every few years and sipping cocktails in one of his villas the rest of the time.

However, he works like crazy - for the past decade, it seems that as soon as he finishes one world tour, Sting immediately starts a new one, and the forced break was only due to the coronavirus pandemic.

By the way, because of it, the plans for this stay in Lithuania had to be adjusted. Sting was supposed to play at the Žalgiris Arena in March of this year, but he postponed the performance for six months due to the restrictions on various events that were still in force in some countries at that time.

Interestingly, he came to Lithuania with essentially the same concert as he held at the same arena in the summer of 2019.

This world concert tour, which began a few years ago, is called "My Songs" and essentially reflects the singer's current situation in the music world.

No special concert themes or more obvious attempts to promote his latest recordings. Essentially, these are just a couple dozen popular and deeply memorable Sting songs that he created individually and with the band "The Police" over the course of several decades of his career.

The setlist, minimal set design with minimal visual effects – Sting’s concerts held three years ago and on Sunday evening are almost the same.

True, there are some innovations. Last fall, the singer released his fifteenth solo album “The Bridge”, which fans have hailed as a return to his best form.

On Sunday evening, Sting included three songs from it in the concert program – “If It’s Love”, “For Her Love” and “Rushing Water”. He sang them one after the other – like a necessary “inclusion”, which can be listened to or skipped, and then returned to the nostalgic songs.

The concert in Kaunas was opened by Sting’s eldest son – 45-year-old Joe Sumner, who has been pursuing a musical career for a couple of decades.

True, the brightest moments of it remain the concerts with his father, to which Joe travels for more than the first time. In Lithuania, he has also supported Sting's concert - in 2006, when he was still playing with his band "Fiction Plane".

This time he was alone on stage with a guitar, but the audience seemed to like his father's manner-like vocals and emotional songs - J. Sumner received perhaps even more applause than usually received by supporting artists.

Sting and his band arrived in Lithuania early Sunday morning – they came by bus from Riga, where they had performed the day before.

He stayed in a hotel in Kaunas, but spent most of the afternoon backstage at the arena, where he quietly prepared for the concert.

The artist, who took the stage with his band shortly before nine in the evening, began the concert with old hits – The Police’s songs “Message In A Bottle” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, and one of his most popular solo songs “Englishman In New York”.

After introducing himself to the audience and playing three songs from his new album, Sting immediately returned to his golden hits.

The jazz-tinged "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You", the lyrical "Fields Of Gold", which has become a love song for millions of couples, the energetic "Brand New Day", the gentle "Shape Of My Heart" - almost all of the songs played at Sting's concert were created 20, 30 years ago or even older.

But it is obvious that the audience is choosing them precisely for them. Sting's albums of the last couple of decades seem like a formality - the singer releases them because he enjoys them himself, but at concerts those songs inevitably give way to old hits.

Nostalgia is a powerful weapon, but on this tour Sting is trying to add some new spices to the song arrangements, louder guitar sounds, light jazz improvisations, and sometimes rap and reggae elements (one piece even featured a fragment of a song by the reggae king Bob Marley).

However, the feeling persists that this concert is not an ingeniously prepared gourmet dessert, but delicious everyday bread. Everything is quite simple - from the stage clothes to the laconic speeches between the songs and the stage view. You came, received well-known songs, rejoiced, thanked, and left. No special intricacies - just perfectly written, time-tested music.

"Heavy Cloud But No Rain", "So Lonely", "Desert Rose" imbued with oriental rhythms, The Police's legendary song "Every Breath You Take" - in the second half of the concert, the hits continued to pour in one after another.

Sting performed the song "King Of Pain" with his son. At that moment, the audience saw two fathers and two sons on stage. Because with long-time guitarist Dominic Miller in Sting's band, the latter's son Rufus is also playing on this tour.

When it seemed that more popular songs had already been heard than could be expected, Sting also played the dramatic "Roxanne" and the amazingly beautiful "Fragile" for the encore.

He introduced the latter song as follows: "I dedicate it to the brave people of Ukraine. And to the brave Russians who are protesting this war and are being arrested for it. This is tyranny."

In February, it was announced that the artist sold the copyrights to the songs he wrote for about 300 million US dollars.

Listening to this concert, it is obvious that he earned every penny. And that we will probably see Sting in Lithuania again. He simply loves this job too much to hang up his bass guitar.

This seems to have been confirmed by the singer himself. "See you later!", - Sting exclaimed, saying goodbye to the loudly applauding audience.

(c) LRTit by Ramūnas Zilnys