Paul Simon and Sting: On Stage Together
Sleeping on down: Simon and Sting in Munich...
The soundtrack of two lives, the confidently delivered flashback of two old masters. Simon & Sting thrilled the audience at Munich's Olympiahalle.
By the third song, the 12,300 spectators in the sold-out Olympiahalle had already reached the melancholic, sun-drenched "Fields of Gold." By track number 13 – clearly a lucky hit – everyone was bouncing through the "Promised Land" of nostalgic well-being to the bouncy Juju world beat. Paradisiacal conditions thus prevailed at the third and final German concert by Paul Simon and Gordon Matthew Sumner, who calls himself Sting.
His "Fields of Gold" was just as much a part of the almost three-hour, nonstop Munich evening as Paul Simon's "Graceland." The hitmakers, who can look back on 50 years of service to the evergreen (Simon turns 74 this year), are zipping up their global careers with a big band of sidekick aces like David Sancious and Dominic Miller. This draws a gripping emotional impact from the very beginning and at the points of intersection.
At first, it seems like a twist of fate in pop history: Sting, the "Englishman in New York," and Paul Simon, neighbours, repeatedly meet in the elevator, exchange coffee, sugar, and their own CDs, and only in 2014 did they decide to share a stage together. By then, Billy Joel and Elton John, for example, had long been engaged in parallel slalom. With Sting and Simon—with their recent ideas not particularly successful—the experiment evolves into a project that, after 40 evenings, works like a charm, allowing for astonishing similarities between an outwardly rather dissimilar couple.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the eclectic! The careful staging of the unspectacular is the program; the sleight of hand is part of the principle of togetherness. The stage is a hidden object for the 15 musicians from the two bands, including Sting (shaggy beard, T-shirt; entering from the left) and Paul Simon (hat, baggy look; entering from the right, high-fives in the middle). Their preferences for flowing jazz rock and shimmering world music, for Cajun, country, and Renaissance Weltschmerz are interwoven; the musical engine purrs along with its 15 cylinders, with Peter Tickell as an electric violinist from the David Garrett school, Marcus Rojas as a tubist, percussionist Jamey Haddad, and singer Jo Lawry, skilfully placing a double vocal track for the two stars, adding additional accents.
The fit 63-year-old Sting, with his high forehead and high-pitched voice, can rely on the powerful New Wave energy of his Police days to work seamlessly. "So Lonely," "Roxanne" (logically in the red light district), and "Message in a Bottle" first target the backs of the knees and then the throats of the people sitting in their seats. Thus, the concert also becomes a high mass of hero worship: stand up – kneel – sit down.
The hall is already on its feet for the first song, "Brand New Day," which shines from memory as a confirmation of yesterday. At the end, after 32 hits in a row, everyone crosses the "Bridge over Troubled Water" together once more. But: everything is under control, rapids without danger, Paul Simon's "graduation" with "Mrs. Robinson" is as far back as his first great love. It is the soundtrack of two lives, where memories are cushioned on down, the confidently delivered flashback work of two old masters.
Sting recalls the pivotal role of Simon's songs and carefully carries his small, 1.60-meter-tall stage partner on his musical hands. He enjoys the excellent acoustics of the hall, dances through the noble, at times very rounded soundscape, and, as a grand master of bittersweet reflections on relationships, thanks the audience with seemingly untouched vocal artistry. Sting's ballad "Fragile" thus becomes a subtle prototype of a kindred musical understanding. This was not the only reason for the cheers.
(c) Abendzeitung München by Andreas Radlmaier
