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Rock'n'Roll Confidential: Mojo talks to Stewart Copeland...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:42:18 -0500

You'd think Stewart Copeland might have taken a break after the Police reunion tour - 158 gigs, 921,000 paying customers, $297 million gross. But since their final Madison Square Garden show on August 7 last year, in addition to his TV and movie soundtrack "day job", he's written two more "classical" pieces and the two items for which he spent part of September in London - his autobiography, Strange Things Happen, and the score to the arena spectacular Ben Hur, premiered at the O2 a couple of days after our encounter (he is its The Narrator too).Copeland greets MOJO in his hotel. full of laughter and fulmination as ever, discoursing on the Middle East - where his father, Miles Sr, a CIA founder, conducted opaque ops while Stewart grew up - and the Republicans'folly in savaging Obama's health care reforms while dissing our wondrous NHS.

The book says you didn't play drums for 10 years after The Police broke up.

Yeah, my colleagues had convinced me I was a menace and a detriment and that I should fuckin' give it up.

It was even more unexpected that you started writing operas.

Classical music was always going through my head. Even when I listened to Hendrix I imagined strings around him. I was never into opera, though. I had a problem with the singers. That exaggerated vibrato. It obscures the melody. Then I saw Wagner, Parsifal, and I got it - over wrought dramatic subjects and overwrought dramatic music sobbing with emotion.When the opportunity to write one came, I thought, "There's nothing wrong with opera that a good opera wouldn't fix." [His debut for Cleveland Opera, was Holy Blood And The Crescent Moon, 1989, a Crusades epic.]

You feel comfortable standing alongside Puccini and Wagner? Absolutely. I prefer my music to Wagner's. Of course I do! slay myself. Always have. It may seem arrogant. It's not. It's rare to find a musician 'fess up to it, but it must be the natural order of things. ln my catalogue now I've got something for every mood. It hits the spot!

Turning to the reunion, the clash with Sting does seem to come down to musical differences.

We differ about what music is for. Polar opposite viewpoints. Sting is an artist with a capital 'A' who conceives a beautiful, perfect vision. As a film composer I'm totally in accord with working to the strict parameters of the director's vision. But the drummer guy's different.

Different how?

Live, drumming is a visceral, animal expression and my job is to get everybody's hair standing on end, (shouts) "Fucking wake up! Burn the building down!" Well, at one of the dreaded band meetings Sting gets Andy lined up and they tell me I'm a liability, I'm screwing up. I say, "Excuse me, have you read a single fucking review? Nobody says I'm playing too loud, too fast, too much. In fact, I have been singled out for praise because of my energy. So fucking get off my back both of you, don't fucking tell me to stop doing what I'm here to do..." Band meetings withered away (laughs).

Did you resolve it between you?

Not until we had our showdown in Singapore [February 4, 2008, the 100th gig] when I was able to say, "Stingo, I am not your problem, you don't need to worry about whether I'm making too much noise, nobody else is worried about it. You may not like it, but that's because you think you're stuck with it. You're not. The end is near. But isn't this fun? Stop resisting it, stop trying to change me and mould me into something you can use. You can't use me because I'm fucking out of here! Don't worry!"

Did he stop worrying?

It took a while, but he did. And by the end of the tour I was proud of our band. When we played Hyde Park [June 29, 2008] I just felt we did it, we're from this city, these people made us what we are and we are one with them and this is it. Earlier in the tour I was not proud of our band, I thought we were faking it, that I could get a better groove with any bass player other than this motherfucker who's just not listening...

"This motherfucker who's just not listening"?

Of course, I'm telling my side and Sting had his own perfectly valid viewpoint,.. But finally we got over that: mistakes weren't mistakes, they were life. You know, I get excited when I reminisce, but actually I'm very happy about it all. We had to go through this and I love my two colleagues and I understand where they're coming from and there's not a trace of bitterness now. It was about what hadn't been said that I wished I'd said - I stopped playing drums for 10 years because I hadn't said it. So the glorious thing about the tour was it all got said.

Tell us something you've never told an interviewer before.

"I can't answer that question."

© Mojo by Phil Sutcliffe

Sunday Times interview with Sting - Sting and his tale - He is returning to his home of North Tyneside to face up to his difficult childhood, but will the musician ever find peace?

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:05:22 -0400

Sting and his tale - He is returning to his home of North Tyneside to face up to his difficult childhood, but will the musician ever find peace?

We are inside Durham Cathedral. It's like being inside a great Gothic wedding cake, pale and cold. Sting's voice - deeper, sadder, more robust - soars amid the incense and the notes from fiddles, harps and Northumbrian pipes. He has come to the northeast of England to perform songs from his new winter-themed album, because he equates the season with coming home. "It's a time for coming out of the cold for comfort, for reflection, for dealing with ghosts, perhaps even rebirth," he says. "It's a wonderful coming home for me. I don't come home often."

It is interesting that of the many places Sting can call home - a pile in Wiltshire, a palazzo in Tuscany, a mansion in Malibu and something state of the art in New York - he still calls the northeast home. Having grown up in the working-class town of Wallsend, North Tyneside, the oldest of four children of a milkman, he has seldom returned since leaving in the 1970s.

The week before, during a break from rehearsals, we sat in the grounds of Durham Cathedral. "Winter is the season where there's almost a gravitational pull towards your roots," he says. "It's like a homing instinct. You look for somewhere warm and cosy. Winter's an uncomfortable season. People are cold and miserable, but at the same time it's an important one for our psychological make-up. It's a time of reflection, imagination, telling stories. Whether the songs are sacred or secular, they have an idea of magic in them."

Sting likes to talk in metaphors, and sometimes complex ones. You often find that there is more than one hidden line in what he is saying. When we meet, his 58th birthday is one week away. He likes to be prepared. He likes to take risks. Lots of elements of his psychological make-up seem to cancel each other out. Is he embracing the winter of his life? What has happened to Sting, Rock-Star Fabulous? Loud, excessive, served champagne by liveried servants. What happens when you are a rock star and you get old: are you supposed to die, retire, shut up, or dye your hair maroon?

Not that Sting's hair is ever going to be maroon. It's no longer egg-yolk yellow. It's a pale, straw-brown, but it's fullish. The blond made it look more transparent, more receding. There's also a beard. Is that part of his winter look?

"I grew a beard last November when I did an opera in Paris with Elvis Costello. I played Dionysus, the Greek god, and they wanted me to look Greek. I rather liked it, so I kept it around, much to my wife's chagrin," he says stroking it.

Does Trudie dislike it because she has permanent face rash? "Shhh," says Sting, tantric sex master, embarrassed when I mention him kissing his wife, the film producer Trudie Styler, whom he has been with for nearly 30 years. "It's a very soft beard. It's not one of those prickly beards." He invites me to feel. I tell him that it's more like a terrier than a silky Afghan hound. "You know Trudie breeds Irish wolfhounds, so she's used to that kind of affection."

As we talk, and on the CD, I notice that his voice, as well as sounding gravellier, also sounds more Geordie. He looks a bit offended when I mention it. "It's not as if I'm putting it on. This is my accent." So, this is more your true voice, and the voice that's without the northeast influence is the one that has been affected? "Yes," he says, but looks slightly disconcerted. It's as if it's not just the Geordie voice, it's the whole Geordie persona that's come back. The Geordie persona as I have known it - because I was born there too - is someone who is not at ease with oneself, who is a little defensive, and who can express sentiment but not emotion. If the northeast had a season it would be winter, many layers and wrappings, because we would rather cover things up. Is all of that you?

"It's certainly me. I feel natural in that garb. I look forward to putting on my sweaters and my boots. I like reflection. It's useful. You have to deal with the ghosts of your past, and there are plenty of ghosts here for me. A lot of friends who are musicians have passed on. I lost my parents here. So when I flew into the airport the other day it was a very bittersweet return. I'm 58 and I seem to have lived three lifetimes since I left."

He defines those lifetimes as "becoming a rock star, and surviving that, and becoming an older person in the music business and trying to figure out a way of doing that. To return home to your roots is important because it injects into you something real. You see your old friends, what they have done and how they relate to you".

Is that frightening, to see that you have grown apart? "I didn't find it frightening. I found it interesting how much it actually stayed the same. When I sing here next week the front row will be people who know exactly where I came from. My dad delivered their milk. I have no mystique here. I am just Gordon from Wallsend."

One of the musicians in his band is the keyboard player Gerry Richardson, a former flatmate who played with him in Last Exit, the band he was in before the Police. Gerry is still a professional musician and teaches at Newcastle College. Sting, who early on worked as a bus conductor, a construction labourer and a tax officer, qualified as a teacher in 1974. Even though he is a kind and patient man and was probably good at teaching, he hated the stability, the no-risk element, the lack of adrenaline. I ask Gerry if he thinks Sting has changed.

"Not fundamentally at all. I still see Gordon in there, as well as Sting. But we are all different personalities to different people, and he is just the same with me. We've been in touch throughout the years. He gets me out of my box whenever he needs me. We used to play some folk songs in the Last Exit sets, and some of the songs we did as Last Exit got reworked as Police songs. He was prolific then, and I don't think he's changed radically in his music either.

"Sting has always been into songs that were not in 4/4 timing. And he still likes to do things with an odd time signature." Winter is a collection of traditional songs and some of his own reworked, but they all have an unmistakable Stingness; the odd timing is haunting and makes happy notes sound sad, and sad notes happy.

Rehearsals break again, and I walk with Sting in those big, stone, echoey corridors. He feels the resonance of the old souls, the old spirits. He thinks he might have been a monk in another life. And I tell him, well he's certainly made up for it in this one. "I've had my moments, I suppose." He doesn't look like a 58-year-old. When his old woolly jumper is removed, a skimpy T-shirt reveals a hard, flat stomach and beautiful yoga arms. "I feel about 14?, actually, but I have 58-year-old memories. I think I have the spirit of a younger man and hopefully the body. I still work out every day."

Does he think about mortality?

"Well, yes, I'm about to enter the wintry part of life, but I also look forward to another spring." Nostalgic and hopeful. Does yoga maintain that mentality? "Yoga seems to maintain me. It's partly vanity, partly discipline, partly just because I'm used to it. I couldn't enjoy being out of shape. I couldn't do my job for a start. It helps me psychologically. I am so prone to depression, or at least melancholy, and being active helps me create the right endorphins to deal with it."

But isn't melancholy good for songwriting? "It's essential. Happy songs, what are they? I love you and you love me. That's pretty banal. Whereas I love you but you love someone else, that's interesting. That's a three-dimensional problem. That's a song."

He can still write songs with yearning, even though sometimes the people who are missing are in fact his parents who have been dead for 20 years. He feels that he still communicates with them most days, and this collection of songs from the northeast certainly carries their spirit.

"Some of these songs relate directly to my parents, and when I'm singing I have to filter that out otherwise I can't really sing them. This album is full of ghost stories. I don't think that ghosts are necessarily unpleasant, I think you need to deal with them. And one song that we sing, Ghost Story, is about my father specifically. It was a very tough relationship, not an easy one. And at the same time I see him every morning in the mirror. 'Oh, I thought you were dead? Oh... it's me.' " Perhaps that's why he had to grow the beard, to differentiate himself.

His father was a milkman, but used to talk of the time that he was a soldier doing National Service in Germany with the Royal Engineers. He worked all his life, not because he was fulfilled but because work defined his manliness. Does Sting feel fulfilled? Is that restlessness why he feels the need to keep on working?

"A certain amount of my personality was in that DNA, a sort of hunger for something that is never really fed - although I'm certainly more fulfilled than my father was. Like most people of his generation, his talent and his brain were not accommodated in the work that he did."

But Sting has every reason to be fulfilled. He has success, acclaim, money, houses; a happy, healthy marriage he is always saying completes him. But you get the feeling he is never satisfied. "There is always going to be hunger, and that's not a bad thing. I can't imagine life without it."

What do you think you have found by coming back here? "Going back to your roots, realising what gifts you have been given from your culture. Honouring that is important for me at this stage in my life. I am not going to become a traditional folk singer, but there has always been that strain in my music. That's where I am at the moment, it's not really an end result. It's just what I'm doing now. I take risks because I get bored easily. I don't like doing the same thing; even though on paper that would seem the most successful thing to do, my instinct tells me otherwise."

These few weeks have been the longest time Sting has been in the northeast since he left. "My brother and sister still live here. My brother delivers the milk like my dad did, and my sister runs Newcastle airport."

Of all of his many homes, which does he feel the most connected to? "I have lived in Italy largely for the last decade, but I am travelling all the time. It's hard to say, but next year we are heading to New York for a couple of years because our youngest son, Giacomo [13], is going to school there." Their other children are Coco, 19, a singer and model, Jake, 24, a film student and Bridget Michael, 25, a film-maker.

Is he a good parent? Sting moves away slightly, his voice becoming distant. "It's not easy. I am travelling all the time and I don't have a normal parent-child relationship. But my kids have had advantages. They have seen the world and have a sophisticated sense of the geopolitics of the globe, and they go to the finest schools. At the same time they complain, and I say, somehow you chose me as your parent, so figure that out - which is better than being a victim. And I actually believe we choose our parents. That's what makes us."

I ask him to explain this. Does he mean that when we are being formed as a soul we magically decide which foetus to inhabit? "Yes, you choose your parents because they are what you need. I am speaking in metaphors. I think it is important never to think of yourself as a victim of your parents. Your parents were there for a reason and they created who you are. You have a choice. You have to think that."

Are his children like him? "If you have got me and Trudie as parents you are going to be very driven, very ambitious and very disciplined, and also a lot of fun." He doesn't say how much of Frances Tomelty, his first wife, is in Joe, 32, now in the band Fiction Plane, who opened for the Police, and Fuschia, 27. You feel a disconnect there, although he once talked of his guilt for not being present when Joe was born and how that sowed the seeds for the end of that marriage. Its failure is something he has never got over.

"I don't think I'm a natural parent. I don't have those skills I see other people demonstrate as a parent. For me it's not a terribly natural thing."

Is that because you were not parented, you were unnurtured? "I was. I was unnurtured. It is not natural for me to go and read a story at night, but I thought I'd better do it all the same."

You were never read a story? "No." Were you hugged? "No. My parents were just kids. My parents certainly loved me. I never had any doubt about that, but they just didn't express it very well. Music became my saviour, my best friend. Music is an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I would sit playing scales for hours on end, obsessively. It channelled my energy, and it still does. I don't know where I'd be without music." It is as if music is the mother he has to nurture and the father he has to be disciplined by. It is striking that when we asked for photographs of him with his parents, or for early snaps of either of them by themselves, he couldn't find any.

We are now sitting under a shady tree having lunch. He is having a beanburger, cooked by the caterers he uses on every tour. Did they do the Police tour? He shakes his head, "Nope." Did you have separate caterers on that tour? "Yes, and that's the last question I'm going to answer about that." I had no idea that the Police reunion could be a source of potential indigestion.

Prior to their world tour in 2007-8, the Police played their last gig in 1983. They didn't know it was their last gig at the time, although they certainly knew things weren't going well. Fights about Sting's songwriting supremacy, and a tabloid headline that said Stewart Copeland had punched Sting and cracked a rib meant the rows were public knowledge. But Sting never told the band it was over; he just ran away - something that used to be a trait of his and which, in his later years, he is addressing. He is running back. He said at the time the Police reformed: "You can abandon something, you can never finish it. Relationships are never finished."

At their peak, the Police were one of the most successful rock bands of all time. For Sting it was a painful seven years. "Everything you thought would make you happy was given to you - and then it did not make you happy. It's a wonderful lesson, to learn where real happiness comes from. I escaped that band..." And one day his instincts told him he had to go back to it.

The band itself spun him into a different orbit, away from everything he knew. "That was one of the sadnesses of my life, that I never made the circle back." Now he is completing that circle. That's why his songs are "a composite of ghosts in my possession. My dad is just one of those".

When his parents died, both in 1987 of cancer, he didn't go to their funerals, stating it was to avoid the media hype. Does he think he should have gone? "Yes, I do regret that. I didn't mourn in the proper way and I was emotionally paralysed. I couldn't cry and it was a feeling of relief and I was guilty about that. So I spent a long protracted period of mourning in much more extravagant ways, mostly through music."

You do get the impression he thinks about death. "We are all faced with the dichotomy of living in the present and looking towards the inevitable, which is death. And how do you deal with that?" A pause. "None of us know. We are struggling to find out. My way is through songs and through my children as opposed to my parents. They are dealing with me getting older."

I remind him that when we met in Los Angeles a couple of years ago when the Police were reforming he said it was all about tying up loose ends. In what other ways is he doing that? And what is he still running away from? "With the Police I think we did tie it up. And now it's done."

You ran away from your first marriage and the guilt haunted you, and your songs. Is that one of your patterns that you can't escape? "I am settled now. I am with a good woman who loves me and I love her. That's what's kept me sane. I am not running away from anything at the moment."

He looks at me. "You are challenging," he says at last. He might have wanted to say, can we stop this interview because it's uncomfortable. But in a funny way Sting enjoys discomfort. He enjoys things that aren't easy. He says he still talks to his Police bandmates, but only on a social level. Doing it again would be "dreadful and gratuitous, and it wouldn't work".

He still travels excessively, has a huge carbon footprint, but has planted 100,000 trees. Deforestation has been his campaign for 20 years. He is often mocked and criticised for being self-indulgent and worthy. Does he mind? "It's part and parcel of being in this position. People are going to have a go at you. Either that or they ignore you." Is it better to be attacked than ignored? "Yes... Because I also get positive attention and feel nurtured by it."

As we walk back through the stone corridors to another rehearsal, dusk is falling and bats are flying about. Sting winds me up saying they like my hair. He is very teenage. He says: "My fifties have been my favourite decade. I've had more fun than any other. There's no reason why my sixties won't be the same. I'm fit, I'm healthy and as long as I have that I'll be happy. Both my parents died before they were 60 of cancer."

Do you ever think about that? "Yes. It puts you in the front line. I know that. There are no guarantees. I just try to be as happy as I can be. None of us are going to get out of this alive."

His parents died within a year of each other. Would he want to die before Trudie? "Yes and no. I don't know. I think about it because there are issues that we all have to deal with."

Are you the one in the relationship who needs to be loved most, or love most? "I think it adjusts throughout the relationship. Sometimes you love more and sometimes you are loved more. How do I want it to end up? I want to end up with that woman still loving me. That's my ambition."

Then we return to the parents. "I wish I could have given my parents more of that happiness before they died, but they were proud of what I had done. Whether they could articulate that was another matter." The irony that his own life is based on self-expression is not lost on him.

"My mother was a romantic. I don't think her hunger for romance was ever satisfied, and that was her tragedy. She needed a much wilder life to be who she was." Perhaps that's why Sting lived it for her.

"I think all the women in my life have satisfied the various archetypes of my mother: the wife, the lover, the mistress, the unattainable female mystery. She encompassed a lot of it. I don't think you will ever get to the bottom of a woman. I don't think men are wired to understand, and I think that's fantastic - a constant mystery. I think I know what women want now though."

In what way? "I think women want to be asked what they want. One shouldn't just assume." Do you mean what shall we eat, what shall we do tonight? "Everything." Do you want to have sex now? "All those things." You actually ask do you want to have sex? "Of course. Do you think a man should just club you and drag you down into the cave?" No, but I think it's something you should already know. "Well, you need to read the signals, but they need to be asked. It's a question of manners."

I think that metaphor works better if you are talking about lunch. "Discourse is important as well as intercourse. Certainly there is an engine in my personality, the way I live my life is driven by that female obsession. I find them interesting to look at and to listen to. It's not just about sex. Certain parts of human psychology mean that we are all made up of male and female, and I have a pretty well-developed sense of the female in me."

His songs are emotional, romantic, female. His body is strong, fit, masculine, and a lot of the way he operates is extremely macho. We are back to those two extremes. "Yes, okay. I admit it."

What will he do after this? "There's a small tour. Various gigs. And I still keep my rock band. I'll think about a new record."

Isn't Mr Rock-Star Fabulous still in there?

"It doesn't take that much to get him out of the box. He's been quiet lately, but he's ready, like a jack-in-the-box." Sting, along with Bono and Elton John, was in Bruno, the Sacha Baron Cohen movie. They all looked ridiculous: poser rock stars, high on narcissism. Was it easy to send yourself up? "Easy. It was fun. I wouldn't mind acting again. I did this thing with Trudie where we play Robert and Clara Schumann. They had a tragic love affair and then he went mad." Is that really you and Trudie? He laughs. "We did this at the Royal Opera House. We read letters to each other, and then music played. It's sweet. Not a dry eye in the house."

Do you cry easily? "Music makes me cry. I watched Cinema Paradiso last week and I cried like a bairn. I'm quite ashamed." We talk about how emotions can get displaced. It's easier to cry at music or movies. "I have experienced that. When my parents were dying I didn't cry, but if I'd watched some sad movie I would have."

I return to Durham the following week for the performance proper. It is emotional and uplifting. Afterwards he tells me he has been visiting some landmarks of his past. "Last week we went to the Quayside market. My dad used to take us there on Sunday mornings after church. It was a big treat to go there, buy something small and see the ships docked. And I was there last Sunday and bought a secondhand book, The History of Newcastle United."

What's his favourite landmark? "Tynemouth Priory." It's just ruins looking over the beach.

"I lost my virginity there." Was that because it was romantic or because you were living at home and that was the only place you could go? "Of course. It wasn't a generation where you could shag in your own house. But it can be romantic there. It's a place famous for lovers' trysts."

So many things have changed. The house he grew up in doesn't exist any more, but it strikes me that much about Sting has stayed the same. Emotionally complicated. A shy man who takes masochistic pleasure in revealing himself, with a great Newcastle sense of humour. His voice is still recognisably his. "And so it should be. Success in music is to have a recognisable signature. If my voice comes on the radio you know it's me and will become more so. That's something I look forward to."

What else are you looking forward to? "The ride. The curiosity of what happens next. When I left teaching they said, 'If you leave now you will lose your pension,' and I could see myself at 58 as a deputy head with a pension in the offing, and that's why I left. I didn't want to see the future. I wanted to spin the wheel and I'm glad to have spun the wheel a few times. I would like to settle down at some point... It doesn't mean I will, though." There's a laugh in his eyes that tells me he is all for spinning the wheel.

© The Sunday Times by Chrissy Iley

''Sting: A Winter's Night... Live from Durham Cathedral'' to be released on DVD November 24... New Great Performances Special to premiere Thanksgiving Night on Public Television...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:00:01 -0400

On November 24, Deutsche Grammophon will release a special, live concert performance on DVD entitled, 'Sting: A Winter's Night... Live from Durham Cathedral'. Filmed at the magnificent Durham Cathedral near Sting's hometown of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Northern England, the DVD features music off his forthcoming album, 'If On A Winter's Night...' in-stores, October 27.

Recorded in HD and produced by Universal Music Classical Management & Productions (UMCMP), in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG, the program will premiere on PBS's Great Performances series on Thanksgiving night, Thursday, November 26 at 9 pm EST (checking local listings). International broadcasts are planned for later this year, with further air dates to be announced locally in each country.

'Sting: A Winter's Night... Live from Durham Cathedral' captures the artist in the unique setting of England's most famous cathedral. Standing on a peninsula overlooking the River Wear in Durham, the one thousand year old UNESCO world heritage building is one of the most iconic landmarks of Northern England. Inside Durham Cathedral, the architecture and atmosphere is as equally inspiring and it is in this setting that Sting was joined by guest musicians including local Newcastle artists Kathryn Tickell (Northumbrian pipes and fiddle), Peter Tickell (fiddle) and Julian Sutton (Melodeon). Esteemed performers from around the world also include Dominic Miller (guitar), Vincent Ségal (cello), Scottish harpist Mary Macmaster, Ira Coleman (bass), Chris Gekker (trumpet), David Mansfield (violin and mandolin), Cyro Baptista, Bashiri Johnson and Rhani Krija (percussion) and vocalists Laila Biali, Lisa Fischer, Jo Lawry, and Steven Santoro. Producer, Robert Sadin conducted the ensemble of 35 musicians, which includes additional string and brass sections.

Both the new album and DVD conjure the mood and spirit of the season with a diverse collection of songs, carols and lullabies spanning the centuries. Featuring traditional music of the British Isles as its starting point, Sting and guest musicians interpret stirring, folk-based melodies including 'The Snow it Melts the Soonest' (traditional Newcastle ballad), 'Soul Cake' (traditional English "begging" song), 'Christmas at Sea' (traditional Scottish song), 'Gabriel's Message' (14th century carol), 'Balulalow' (lullaby by Peter Warlock) and 'Now Winter Comes Slowly' (Henry Purcell). Two of Sting's own compositions are also featured: 'Lullaby for an Anxious Child' and 'The Hounds of Winter',' which originally appeared on his previous release 'Mercury Falling'.

In addition, the DVD programme features a setting of the 'Coventry Carol' in which Sting and musicians are joined by the Durham Cathedral Boys' Choir, as well as songs not included on the album - Peter Warlock's haunting 'Bethlehem Down', a lively arrangement of the traditional song 'I Saw Three Ships' and Sting's own 'Ghost Story'.

'Sting: A Winter's Night... the Documentary' features a behind-the-scenes look at the concert's genesis, beginning with the album recording sessions at Sting's home in the Italian countryside, leading up to the final rehearsals at Durham Cathedral. Along the way, Sting revisits places from his childhood and reunites with old friends and band mates, swapping stories and reminiscing.

Featuring both a compelling live concert and evocative film footage, 'Sting: A Winter's Night...' was directed and produced by the Emmy award winning team, Jim Gable and Ann Kim of Graying & Balding, Inc.

Stewart Los Angeles Book signing, Oct 8...

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:01 -0400

WHAT: Stewart Copeland, renowned drummer, member of The Police and celebrated composer will make his only Los Angeles public appearance to sign copies of his new book: STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN (HarperStudio, .99, October 2009)

WHEN: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8th, 2009 6:00 PM

WHERE: Amoeba Music, 6400 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA http://www.amoeba.com/ For information call: 323-245-6400

DETAILS: In 1977, the Police stormed the music scene to dominate the top of the charts and the radio airwaves worldwide with five #1 albums and a succession of top 10 hit singles. In 2007, the band reunited for the third highest grossing tour of all-time selling over 3 million tickets in 151 shows. But if you think that is the end of Stewart Copeland's story, you couldn't be more wrong. His experiences take him from raising seven children in Los Angeles to the polo grounds in England to Africa for a film shoot with Pygmies and to his studio where he scores films and pens operas. Copeland's voice is an original. His humor, sharp observations and rich use of language shows how the tall American became the third member of one of the most influential bands, and he even recounts the reunion tour and the famed dynamics between him and his bandmates. With this book you are more than a reader, you are a member of Copeland's crew and ride shotgun with the mercurial and brilliant drummer. A must for memoir buffs and Police fans alike.

This is your one chance in Los Angeles to have Stewart Copeland personally sign a copy of STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN.

Books will be sold by the independent bookstore, Vroman's (www.vromansbookstore.com). Amoeba will be accepting pre-orders for the book on amoeba.com and will have the book signed by Stewart Copeland before it ships. (To be eligible for this offer, orders must be received by noon on Oct. 8th.) If you plan to come to the LA in-store, please purchase your book at the store on the day-of the signing.

View Amoeba's exclusive interview with Stewart Copeland at his recording studio, talking about the new book (and MUCH more)! http://www.amoeba.com/live-shows/videos/stewart-copeland.html

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Sting to perform at the AboutUs Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:59:59 -0400

About Us - Natural Nós Festival...

Sting and Jason Mraz, amongst many other attractions, mark the 2009 edition of the festival, that happens on November 21st and 22nd in Sao Paulo.

Created by Mondo Entretenimento in 2008 to disseminate, by means of entertainment, sustainability and the importance of each one of us in the planet, the About Us Festival will come back to São Paulo on November 21st and 22nd now with Natura acting as the event's main sponsor. The About Us - Natura Nós will surely repeat last year's great success now with Natura, a company that brings it's expertise on responsible management, establishing deep relationships based on ethics and transparency, in addition to the compatible company goals on sustainability. This year's event will be located at the Pista Atletica of the Ibirapuera Park and it brings once again a primer of ecological offers and activities as well as great music and fun.

After bringing names like Ben Harper and Dave Matthews Band, the festival this year is divided in two distinct schedules: on the first day, November 21st, the Festival mainly reaches out to the kids and families. Attractions include the Monica Group (beloved Brazilian cartoon character), Afro Mix, that mixes dance, music and theater, HI-5 Five Senses, based in the childlike series of Discovery Kids, the Minas Gerais Choir "Meninos do Araçuaí" and Palavra Cantada, bringing their prized children's repertoire.

The second day of the festival, Sunday, November 22nd, is directed to raising awareness to all audiences. This year, the event's featured musician is also a great supporter of world ecological awareness: singer, composer and multiinstrumentalist, Sting.

Also on Sunday the audience will enjoy, for the first time in Brazil, Jason Mraz, author of the hits "I'm Yours" and "Lucky" to mention a few and a team of renowned Brazilian artists: Afro Reggae, Lenine, Carlinhos Brown and the São Paulo native, Arnaldo Antunes.

The tickets for the About Us - Natura Nós Festival will be on sale on October 6th at the official event's box office @ Morumbi Shopping, Call Center 4003 15 27 or on-line @ www.livepass.com.br.

Signed Stewart book winners announced...

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:31:31 -0400

Courtesy of HarperStudio and Stewart Copeland we had ten signed galley copies of Stewart's forthcoming autobiography "Strange Things Happen: A Life with "The Police", Polo and Pygmies" to give away in a prize draw for Police.com members.

That draw ended at midnight last night and we're delighted to to announce the winners of these copies are: Andrew Shiers, Angela Romano, Jeffrey Slate, Marc Kieser, Onno Stienen, Sean MacNintch, Sandra Duncan, Stacy Ryan, Tim Carls and Tony Harn.

Thanks very much to the hundreds of you that entered and to HarperStudio and Stewart for providing such great prizes!

Stewart booksignings - and win a copy of ''Strange Things Happen: A Life With 'The Police', Polo and Pygmies''...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:53 -0400

Stewart has two book signings planned in the States in Hollywood and San Francisco. For more details visit HOLLYWOOD and SAN FRANCISCO.

Courtesy of HarperStudio and Stewart Copeland we have ten signed galley copies of Stewart's forthcoming autobiography "Strange Things Happen: A Life with "The Police", Polo and Pygmies" to give away in a prize draw for Police.com members.

When Stewart Copeland gets dressed, he has an identity crisis. Should he put on 'leather pants, hostile shirts and pointy shoes?' Or wear something more appropriate to the 'tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding lotus eater' his success has allowed him to become? This dilemma is at the heart of Copeland's vastly entertaining memoir-in-stories-that-could-be-told-over-a-meal, "Strange Things Happen". The world knows Copeland as the drummer for The Police, one of the most successful bands in rock history. But they may not know much about his childhood growing in the Middle East as the son of a CIA agent. Or his film-making adventures with the Pygmies in the deepest Congo. Or his passion for polo ('Brideshead Revisited on horses'). Stewart Copeland counts himself fortunate to have been the founder of the most played and successful trio of the 1980s. More recently he has travelled the world in search of exotic rhythms and musical celebration, from mysterious Easter Island to Mozambique, and from the outback of Australia to the remotest regions of the Congolese jungles.

For details of how to enter visit ThePolice.com/strangethings and enter in the draw, remembering to read the terms and conditions first of course!

Also, stay tuned to both ThePolice.com and StewartCopeland.net
over the next couple of weeks for another contest (on Stewart's site for signed finished copies of the book), and (on both sites) some audio chapters from the book, read by Stewart which will be available as downloadable MP3's!

Sting talks about ''If On A Winter's Night...''

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:56:37 -0400

A WINTER GATHERING

It is February 2009, a cold, relentless wind rattles doors and windows as it wraps itself round the old house that sits atop a Tuscan hillside. Surrounded by cypress trees standing against the wintry onslaught, the house has been my home and retreat for the last decade. In the summer, its elevation gives us some respite from the sizzling temperatures in nearby Florence, but in the winter we experience the implacable wind that descends from the North down the peninsula and across the exposed Tuscan hills.

Seven musicians, wrapped in scarves and coats, instruments resting on their knees, sit huddled around the kitchen fireplace, nursing hot mugs of tea, attempting to get some warmth into their fingers. Nearest to me is Kathryn Tickell, a traditional musician from my hometown Newcastle. Her Northumbrian Pipes, as well as her fiddle playing, have graced four of my albums since the early nineties. Next to her sits Julian Sutton, another traditional musician from Newcastle, who says very little, preferring instead to express his eloquence via the buttons of his beloved Melodeon. To my right is longterm colleague and guitarist Dominic Miller, my right and left hand for almost two decades. His presence, as well as his patience with my gadfly meanderings, is as comforting as his hands are steady. Mary Macmaster, Celtic harpist from Scotland, sits smiling in the glow of the firelight, patiently tuning the steel strings of her instrument between sips of tea.

I met cel1ist Vincent Segal last year while performing in Steve Nieve's opera 'Welcome to the Voice' at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris Vincent plays everything from plucked bossa nova rhythms to sonorous Bach preludes. The Chatelet is also where I met Ibrahim Maalouf, an exceptional Lebanese trumpet player. He is another quiet soul who sits absently staring at my dog Compass, lying by the corner of the fireplace: Compass returns his gaze with a look that is both watchful and insouciant. Finally there is violinist Daniel Hope, more at home perhaps in the great concert halls of the world than in a farmhouse kitchen, but nonetheless excited to be among this motley of musicians - and able to improvise in the informal way that most of us outside the classical world approach musical arrangements.

Each of us will explore the chosen pieces on his or her own, until the separate strands are woven together - a process which, I suppose, is my job: a task I'm happy to share on this occasion with Bob Sadin, New York producer, orchestral arranger and conductor. Bob stands with his back to the room, facing the window and observing the inclement weather, his flat cap clamped permanently onto the back of his head. "Shall we begin?" he says, still with his back to us. "We seem to have been gifted the appropriate weather." Ah yes! For we are gathered here to celebrate and explore the music of Winter, the season of frosts and long dark nights.

WINTERS PAST

Bob hands out copies of 'The Cold Song' by Henry Purcell from the semi-opera King Arthur, with lyrics by John Dryden. The Cold Genius is summoned back from the dead, we start to play, and somewhere in the house a door slams.

The cold months of the northern hemisphere have been granted to us by the fortunate tilt of the Earth on its axis, and they exercise a powerful influence on our collective psychology. They are part of the myth of ourselves we carry inside our heads, created as much in the shared landscape of the imagination as in the concrete reality of our surroundings.

Like all earthly creatures we seem pre-wired to recognize and respond to the polar archetypes of light and dark, of heat and cold as they are encoded in the rhythm of the days and nights and the perpetual cycle of the seasons.

Today is exceptionally cold but the Winters of my childhood seemed to be far longer and far colder than they are now. Winter in this 21st century seems scarcely to begin before it is over, snowfall is rare, and when it does occur, it is short-lived.

Global warming, if that is what is reducing our annual cold season, is probably taking its toll on the human psyche just as it seems to be altering the seasonal rhythms of the planet itself Something important is in the process of being taken from us, for despite the frequent foulness of the weather, and the hardship of those who have to work outside, there is something of the Winter that is primal, mysterious and utterly irreplaceable, something both bleak and profoundly beautiful, something essential to this myth of ourselves, to the story of our humanity, as if we somehow need the darkness of the winter months to replenish our inner spirits as much as we need the light, energy and warmth of the Summer.

I remember well those long hours of darkness from November to March. We would walk to school in the dark, and find our way home in that same darkness. When we rose, there would be frost on the inside of windows, where you could scratch a face with your fingernail. We would get dressed for school under the sheets, and then, bundled up under layers of woollen clothes, we would walk ghostly streets in freezing fogs, ice treacherously underfoot, and we'd gaze in wonder at icicles hanging from railway bridges.

I remember the soft snowfall of so many dark winter mornings with my Dad on his milk round. We would often be the first to disturb it, as we drove silently through the empty streets, and the first to leave our footprints on pavements and garden paths, with the clank of the milk bottles in our hands muffled by the deadening and soundless snow. In whatever was left of the day, the sun was scarcely glimpsed, if at all: just a cold yellow disc rising above the naked treetops, or the whitened roofs of the town.

Sometimes on a winter's night I would contrive to be alone in the downstairs room of our draughty Victorian house. We kept a coal fire there, our only source of heat turning off the light, and sitting on the edge of the fender, I'd be drawn to the glowing coals and the flickering of the firelight, the room full of darting shadows. There I was free to imagine spirits and hauntings, for Winter, more than any other, was the season of the imagination, of transformed magical landscapes and the eerie silences of the snow.

Later that evening in Tuscany, the wind still howling outside, I will ask Kathryn if she knows any songs from Newcastle that would suit this project. She tells me that when she was a small child her Dad used to sing her a song called 'The Snow It Melts the Soonest'. I don't know it, but she and Julian will patiently teach it to me. The song, like the moors of Northumberland in the winter, has a characteristic bleakness and is starkly beautiful. As I sing it, I feel a rare twinge of homesickness.

THE CHRISTMAS STORY

Since the first millennium the festival of Christmas has become the central and defining event of the Winter season; the story of Christ's birth contains many magical elements, prefigured by ancient prophecy: the god king born among animals in a stable, the mysterious star in the East, the Three Wise Men, King Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents, Mary and Joseph and the conundrum of the Virgin Birth. I appreciate the beauty of these stories and how they have inspired musicians and poets for many centuries. It was my desire to treat these themes with reverence and respect, and despite my personal agnosticism, the sacred symbolism of the church's art still exerts a powerful influence over me.

In the medieval lexicon the rose was a symbol of flawless perfection and became associated with both Christ and his mother Mary. Two songs in this collection have this as a central metaphor, both based on a verse from Isaiah ("And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots"): 'Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming', a 15th-century German carol, harmonized by Praetorius a century later, and 'There Is No Rose of Such Virtue', an English carol horn the same period. While the metaphor of the rose is clearly medieval, it appears to carry a faint echo of the nature spirits of the pre-Christian era. While this would undoubtedly have been an unconscious link, the syncretic nature of symbolism is both subtle and persistent.

In selecting the songs here, I was drawn to many of the beautiful lullabies horn both secular and religious traditions - indeed, all of the songs on the album are lullabies of a kind - and became intrigued by their dual nature, for lullabies seem to be designed not only to soothe but also to unsettle the listener. Peter Warlock composed his beautiful setting of the Scottish hymn 'Balulalow', a lullaby that is lyrically at the more comforting end of the spectrum; but the E flat pedal against the modal voicing of the arrangement is not entirely free of dark portents. Similarly, 'Lullaby for an Anxious Child', one of my own compositions with Dominic Miller, contains forebodings of a dark world beyond the cradle.

The imagery of 'Gabriel's Message', originally a Basque carol, is both beautiful and terrifying. Mary, who is - as usual - described as meek and gentle, is confronted by the vision of an awesome being with eyes of flame and wings of drifted snow. [...] The Mary and Joseph of the 'Cherry Tree Carol' are attractively human in the way they respond to their unusual predicament. On their flight into Egypt, Mary, now with child, asks her husband to gather cherries for her. With some anger, Joseph replies that the father of the baby should fetch her cherries, and not he. Such an honest emotional response is refreshing.

Implicit in the story of the birth of Christ is the knowledge of his death and his subsequent Resurrection. This is what connects it to the secular songs about the cycle of the seasons. We are reminded that there is light and life at the centre of the darkness that is Winter - or conversely that, no matter how comfortable we feel in the cradle, there is darkness and danger all around us.

ANCIENT ECHOES

The magical quality of the Christian story is not diminished by the knowledge that much of the myth of Christmas seems to have been superimposed upon an ancient matrix. If anything, those ancient echoes of the pagan solstice still reverberate in the stories of spirits and ghosts for which the season is famous.

Our ancestors celebrated the paradox of light at the heart of the darkness, and the consequent miracle of rebirth and the regeneration of the seasons. Ancient cultures not only observed these phenomena, but also took an active and imaginative role in their propagation. The winter solstice needed to be celebrated ritually so that a new cycle of the seasons could begin, crops could be sown, animals husbanded and life itself could proceed. It is this imaginative contract with nature that was at the heart of the winter rituals and at the heart of ancient myth.

For me it was important to draw parallels between the Christian story and the older traditions of the winter solstice. These myths and stories are our common cultural heritage, and as such need to be kept alive through reinterpretation within the context of contemporary thinking, even if that thinking is essentially agnostic. However, the mystery at the heart of the cosmos, and indeed of life itself, remains intact - perhaps insoluble to beings at our level of consciousness. In the meantime, all of us need our myths to live by.

Like many people, I have an ambivalent attitude towards the celebration of Christmas. For many, it is a period of intense loneliness and alienation. I specifically avoided the jolly, almost triumphalist, strain in many of the Christian carols. I make a musical reference to 'God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen' only as a dramatic counterpoint to the words in 'Soul Cake', for example. This was a song sung at Halloween by children who go from door to door asking for pennies and "soul cakes" (the latter not originally intended for the living). I was also keen to avoid the domestic cosiness of many of the secular songs, recognizing that, for many, Winter is a time of darkness and introspection.

Likewise, I was attracted to Robert Louis Stevenson's poem 'Christmas at Sea' because it describes so well the powerful gravitational pull of home that Christmas exerts on the traveller. When Mary Macmaster starred to sing the Gaelic song 'Thograinn Thograinn,' a women's working-song from the Isle of Skye, I thought the melody would make a perfect counterpoint for the longing of Stevenson's sailor, who finds himself on a foundering ship below the cliffside town where he was born, on this "of all days in the year... Blessed Christmas morn".

For those with even darker tastes 'The Burning Babe', a poem by the 16th-century English Jesuit martyr Robert Southwell, offers a macabre vision encountered on a winter's night, of the infant Jesus suspended in the darkness and burning in agony for the sins of man. The musical setting is the work of traditional singer and fiddler Chris Woods.

It would have seemed strange not to make reference at least to Schubert's great song cycle Winterreise, his masterly meditation on the season, and one of the inspirations for the present collection. I've taken some liberties with the English translation of 'Der Leiermann' in suggesting that the snarling dogs mentioned there may perhaps take a more active role in the demise of the hurdygurdy man. The observer in the song not only maintains a sense of curiosity and empathy towards the subject but perhaps envisions the spectre of his own future.

Finally comes 'You Only Cross My Mind in Winter', inspired by the Sarabande from J. S. Bach's Sixth Cello Suite; not surprisingly, it's a ghost story. My other contribution to the album is also a ghost story of a kind, 'The Hounds of Winter'.

Walking amid the snows of Winter, or sitting entranced in a darkened room gazing at the firelight, usually evokes in me a mood of reflection, a mood that can be at times philosophical, at others wildly irrational; I find myself haunted by memories. For Winter is the season of ghosts; and ghosts, if they can be said to reside anywhere, reside here in this season of frosts and in these long hours of darkness. We must treat with them calmly and civilly, before the snows melt, and the cycle of the seasons begins once more.

''Crude'' opens in select US cities this fall, starting in New York on September 9...

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:34:42 -0400

CRUDE, the award-winning new film featuring Sting and Trudie Styler's Rainforest Foundation's work in Ecuador and footage of The Police's performance at Live Earth, opens in select U.S. cities this fall, starting in New York on September 9th. To see the trailer and learn more about the film, please visit www.crudethemovie.com.

CRUDE opens in select cities beginning September 9th at the IFC Center: www.ifccenter.com/films/crude/.

To find CRUDE in your area, please visit: http://firstrunfeatures.com/crude_playdates.html

"Rarely have such conflicts been examined with the depth and power of Joe Berlinger's documentary Crude. These real characters and events play out on the screen like a sprawling legal thriller." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"A remarkable documentary... Gripping... Intrinsically cinematic... The most urgent film I've seen at Sundance this year." - Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

"A fascinating and important story. Crude does an extraordinary job of merging journalism and art." - Christiane Amanpour, CNN Chief International Correspondent

Three years in the making, the new cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, the award-winning Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, Crude subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco - which merged with Chevron in 2001 - spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a "death zone" in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life. Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by "environmental con men" who are seeking to line their pockets with the company's billions.

The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate. And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged in and out of court, and the case drew attention from Sting and Trudie Styler, an array of politicians and journalists, and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film's subjects sparked further controversy as they won a CNN "Hero" award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Shooting in dozens of locations on three continents and in multiple languages, Berlinger and his crew gained extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond, capturing the drama as it unfolded while the case grew from a little-known legal story to an international cause célèbre. Crude is a ground-level view of one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time, one that has the potential of forever changing the way international business is conducted. While the environmental impact of the consumption of fossil fuels has been increasingly documented in recent years, Crude focuses on the human cost of our addiction to oil and the increasingly difficult task of holding a major corporation accountable for its past deeds.

Sting to perform with The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music's 153rd Anniversary Concert January 30, 2010 - Concert-only tickets on-sale September 15...

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:00:01 -0400

The Philadelphia Orchestra today announced that Sting will appear as its special guest for the Academy of Music 153rd Anniversary Concert on Saturday, January 30, 2010. Sting, world-renowned singer/composer, will perform some of his best-known works with the Orchestra, continuing the Academy's long history of presenting popular music.

In addition, esteemed conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who made his North American debut with the Orchestra at the Academy of Music 40 years ago, will celebrate by leading a program of classical favorites. This occasion marks Mr. Frühbeck's third appearance leading the Academy of Music Anniversary Concert. Additional guest artist and program information for the concert will be announced at a later date. The Anniversary Concert is created and produced by Wayne Baruch and Charles F. Gayton, who also produced the Academy 150th, 151st, and 152nd anniversary concerts.

Concert-only tickets, priced at $200 and located in the Amphitheatre level, go on sale on September 15, 2009. Tickets can be purchased by calling 215.893.1999 or by visiting www.philorch.org/academyofmusic.

The Academy Ball, which immediately follows the Anniversary Concert, takes place at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. The gala is being chaired by Mrs. Fred L. Hudson III and Mr. Joseph A. Frick. Invitations will be mailed in early October. For additional information on this event, please call the Academy of Music Restoration Fund Office at 215.893. 1978.

The region's premier gala benefit, the annual Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball has been held each January for 53 years. The first Anniversary Concert and Ball took place on January 26, 1957, and celebrated the Centennial Jubilee of the Academy of Music. Chaired by Mr. G. Stockton Strawbridge, with Mrs. Francis Boyer as program book chairman, the event showcased a star-studded line-up in which Eugene Ormandy shared his podium with Danny Kaye. Guest performers included classical artists Marian Anderson, Hilde Gueden, Arthur Rubinstein, and Isaac Stern, and popular singer Dinah Shore. It has always been one of the region's most successful fundraisers, raising significant funds for the Academy of Music Restoration Fund and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Owned by The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, this National Historic Landmark served as the home of The Philadelphia Orchestra for more than a century, from the ensemble's founding in 1900 to the opening of The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in December 2001.

About the Artists

A composer, singer, actor, author, and activist, Sting has remained at the forefront of the public consciousness for four decades and has written some of the most enduring songs of our time. A milkman's son from Newcastle, England, Sting was a teacher, soccer coach, and ditchdigger before turning to music. Inspired equally by jazz and the Beatles, he formed the Police with drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers in 1977. The band quickly became a success both in the UK and U.S. scoring several No. 1 hits including "Roxanne," "Every Breath You Take," "King of Pain," and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." The Police earned five Grammy Awards and two Brits. In 2003 the group was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2007, The Police reformed and embarked on a world tour that played to over 3.7 million people on five continents.

Sting launched his solo career in 1985 with the release of Dream of the Blue Turtles and has since evolved into one of the world's most distinctive and highly respected performers, collecting an additional 11 Grammys, two Brits, a Golden Globe, an Emmy, three Oscar nominations, Billboard Magazine's Century Award, and MusiCares 2004 Person of the Year. He has released nine additional solo records, including Nothing Like The Sun (1987), Ten Summoner's Tales (1993), Brand New Day (1999,) All This Time (2001), and Songs From the Labyrinth, which featured the music of Elizabethan songwriter John Dowland. His forthcoming album, If on a Winter's Night... to be released this Fall on Deutsche Grammophon, presents an arc of songs that conjure the season of spirits, featuring a collection of carols and lullabies spanning the centuries, resulting in a haunting, spiritual and reflective musical journey.

He has appeared in 15 films, Executive Produced the critically acclaimed, "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints," and in 1989 starred in a Broadway play Threepenny Opera. Also an accomplished author, Sting published a memoir entitled "Broken Music" in 2003, which spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Most recently, he released "Lyrics" - a comprehensive collection of lyrics and personal commentary, also featuring photographs from throughout his career.

Sting's support for human rights organization like the Rainforest Foundation, Amnesty International, and Live Aid mirrors his art in its universal outreach. Along with wife Trudie Styler, Sting founded the Rainforest Foundation in 1989 to protect both the world's rainforests and the indigenous peoples who live there. Together, they have raised more than $25 million dollars with their 15 benefit concerts to raise funds and awareness of our planet's endangered resources. Since its inception, the Rainforest Foundation has expanded to a network of interconnected organizations working in 23 countries around the globe.

Sting's appearance with the Orchestra at Academy of Music 153rd Anniversary Concert will be conducted by David Hartley.

Born in Burgos, Spain, in 1933, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos studied violin, piano, music theory, and composition at the conservatories in Bilbao and Madrid, and conducting at Munich's Hochschule für Musik, where he graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Richard Strauss Prize. He currently is chief conductor and artistic director of the Dresden Philharmonic.

Mr. Frühbeck has served as general music director of the Rundfunkorchester Berlin, principal guest conductor of the National Symphony and Tokyo's Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, and music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI Turin, the Bilbao Orchestra, the National Symphony of Spain (where he was later appointed emeritus conductor), the Düsseldorf Symphony, and the Montreal Symphony. He made his North American debut in 1969 with The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. Mr. Frühbeck is a regular guest conductor with many of the world's ensembles including London's Philharmonia Orchestra; the Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Israel philharmonics; the Vienna Symphony; and the major Japanese orchestras. He has also made extensive tours with ensembles such as the London Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Spanish National Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Madrid, and the Swedish Radio Orchestra.

Since 1975 Mr. Frühbeck has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. His other distinctions include an honorary doctorate from the University of Navarra in Spain, the Gold Medal of the City of Vienna, the Bundesverdienstkreutz of the Republic of Austria and Germany, the Gold Medal from the Gustav Mahler International Society, and the Jacinto Guerrero Prize, which he received in 1997 from the Queen of Spain. Mr. Frühbeck recordings for labels such as EMI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Spanish Columbia, and Orfeo include Mendelssohn's Elijah and St. Paul, Mozart's Requiem, Orff's Carmina burana, Bizet's Carmen, and the complete works of Falla.

Founded in 1900, The Philadelphia Orchestra has distinguished itself as one of the leading orchestras in the world through a century of acclaimed performances, historic international tours, best-selling recordings, and its unprecedented record of innovation in recording technologies and outreach. The Orchestra has maintained an unparalleled unity in artistic leadership with only seven music directors throughout its history: Fritz Scheel (1900-07), Carl Pohlig (1907-12), Leopold Stokowski (1912-41), Eugene Ormandy (1936-80), Riccardo Muti (1980-92), Wolfgang Sawallisch (1993-2003), and Christoph Eschenbach (2003-08).

This rich tradition is carried on by chief conductor Charles Dutoit. Mr. Dutoit has a long-standing relationship with the Orchestra, having made his debut with the ensemble in 1980. Highlights of his first season included the Opening Night Concert, featuring pianist Martha Argerich; performances of Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet and Requiem, part of Mr. Dutoit's four-year focus on the works of that composer; the U.S. premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki's Concerto grosso No. 1 for three cellos, part of the Orchestra's celebration of Mr. Penderecki's 75th birthday; and Honegger's Symphony No. 3 ("Liturgical"). During his tenure, Mr. Dutoit will also focus on the music of the Ballets Russes, which began in the 2008-09 season with performances of Stravinsky's complete music to The Firebird.

The Philadelphia Orchestra annually touches the lives of more than one million music lovers worldwide through its performances, publications, recordings, and broadcasts. The Orchestra presents a subscription season in Philadelphia each year from September to May, in addition to education and community partnership programs, and appears annually at Carnegie Hall. Its summer schedule includes an outdoor series at Philadelphia's Mann Center for the Performing Arts, free Neighborhood Concerts, and residencies at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York.

For more information about The Philadelphia Orchestra please visit www.philorch.org.

ACADEMY OF MUSIC 153RD ANNIVERSARY CONCERT January 30 at 7:30 p.m. - Saturday evening - Academy of Music

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos Conductor
Sting Special Guest
David Hartley Conductor

This concert will be performed without an intermission.

Concert-only tickets, on sale beginning September 15, are available in the Academy of Music's Amphitheatre: $200 ($168.50 tax-deductible per seat) 215.893.1999 or www.philorch.org/academyofmusic.

For gala information, please call the Academy of Music Restoration Fund Office at 215.893.1978.

Sting Relies On Hits For Foxwoods Concert...

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:01:37 -0400

The reunion of the Police for a 2007-08 tour was strictly a nostalgia play, an enthusiastically received recycling of past hits from a group that showed little interest in recording together again. Group frontman Sting has since returned to a solo career and is making a new solo record, but his formula was just as hit-focused for his stop Sunday night at the MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, as he filled a 20-song set with a checklist of his most popular solo and Police tunes with few unexpected turns.

Staked to a sturdy pulse by the three-piece band that accompanied him, the 57-year-old Englishman plucked at an electric bass and sounded sharp as he shifted his voice from husky exhale to shiny bark in the opener 'If I Ever Lose My Faith in You'. Drummer Josh Freese drove the insistent, punk-derived beat of 'Message in a Bottle', while Sting howled its lyrics with a practiced blend of urgency and confidence.

The exceptional David Sancious had a keyboard flourish for every type of tune, whether stretching out on 'Englishman in New York', or adding atmosphere to 'Fields of Gold'. Guitarist Dominic Miller colored that delicate tune and sizzled on 'Synchronicity II'.

Like his fluid bass work, Sting's singing provided his material with punctuation; in the case of his voice, it typically came as an extra touch of gusto at the end of each lyrical passage, small jolts that drove 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free' and 'Driven to Tears'. His bass lines were rarely showy but were among the quirky components of a jaunt across 'Seven Days' in which the groove was a moving target.

The show featured no tunes from Sting's two most recent discs, and took half of its offerings from the Police, among them the buoyant 'Walking on the Moon' and a gently swaying trip through 'Tea in the Sahara'. The set's final four songs were all Police numbers, including a bounding rendition of 'When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around' propelled by Sancious, and an extended finale of 'Roxanne' whose meandering middle section did little but accentuate the size of the blowout when the band ramped it back up.

The show's two encores suited a show that was topped out at enjoyable and included a take on 'King of Pain'. Sting belted gamely through 'Every Breath You Take' and set a soothing mood as he picked out the guitar lines of 'Fragile' to close the show, an old hand at the art of crowd pleasing.

© The Hartford Courant by Thomas Kintner

Sting set to release new recording ''If On A Winter's Night''...

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:00:01 -0400

To be released October 26, 2009 on Deutsche Grammophon - (Germany: 23 October, USA: 27 October, UK: 2 November)

This fall, Sting will release a new album dedicated to his favorite season - Winter - a season which has inspired countless songwriters over the centuries and produced a wealth of music exploring all of its many guises. If On a Winter's Night... presents an arc of songs that conjures the season of spirits, resulting in a haunting, spiritual and reflective musical journey.

"The theme of winter is rich in inspiration and material," comments Sting; "by filtering all of these disparate styles into one album I hope we have created something refreshing and new." He continues, "Our ancestors celebrated the paradox of light at the heart of the darkness, and the consequent miracle of rebirth and the regeneration of the seasons."

In collaboration with esteemed producer and arranger, Robert Sadin, "If On a Winter's Night..." features traditional music of the British Isles as its starting point. Sting and guest musicians interpret a stirring collection of songs, carols, and lullabies including The Snow it Melts the Soonest (traditional Newcastle ballad), Soul Cake (traditional English "begging" song) Gabriel's Message (14th century carol), Balulalow (lullaby by Peter Warlock) and Now Winter Comes Slowly (Henry Purcell).

Two of Sting's own compositions are also featured on the album, Lullaby for an Anxious Child and The Hounds of Winter, which originally appeared on his previous release Mercury Falling, alongside Hurdy Gurdy Man, - a musical reworking and English translation (by Sting) of Der Leiermann from Schubert's classic winter song-cycle Winterreise.

For this exploration of the themes and emotions of Winter, Sting is joined by friend and long time colleague, guitarist Dominic Miller. Additional guests include an ensemble of three remarkable musicians from Northern England and Scotland: Kathryn Tickell (fiddle and Northumbrian pipes) Julian Sutton (melodeon) and Mary MacMaster (metal string Scottish harp), along with Daniel Hope (violin), Vincent Ségal (cello), Chris Botti and Ibrahim Maalouf, (trumpet), Cyro Baptista and Bijan Chemirani (percussion), the Webb Sisters (vocals) and Stile Antico (vocal ensemble).

The Sage Gateshead is Five! - Kathryn Tickell and Sting to help celebrate the Sage's Fifth Birthday...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:38:14 -0400

The Sage Gateshead celebrates its Fifth Birthday this year and joining the party are Spiritualized, Northern Sinfonia, Kathryn Tickell with very special guest Sting, Evelyn Glennie and many more... Including YOU!

It's hard to believe with the hundreds of thousands of music making sessions that have taken place both in The Sage Gateshead and around the Northeast, and with almost 2,000 performances to date, that this internationally renowned home for music and musical discovery is only 5 years old!

To celebrate, The Sage Gateshead is holding a weekend of music from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th December.

The programme - as planned to date - includes:

Kathryn Tickell: Northumbrian piper and winner of the Queen's Medal for Music, Kathryn Tickell, is joined by friends including international recording artist Sting who, as a solo musician and member of 'The Police', has sold over 100 million records and received sixteen Grammy Awards and an Oscar nomination for his work.

Dame Evelyn Glennie plays with Northern Sinfonia, orchestra of The Sage Gateshead, in a concert featuring James Macmillan's 'Veni Veni Emanuel', John Taverner's 'The Lamb' and Britten's 'St Nicholas' featuring The Sage Gateshead's vocal regional youth ensemble, Quay Voices - on sale NOW!

classic indie-rock band Spiritualized, with orchestra, chorus and special guests, perform their award winning album 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space', which received massive critical acclaim winning NME's album of the year in 1997 (beating Radiohead's OK Computer), and reaching No.4 in the charts - on sale NOW!

Thomas Zehetmair, Music Director of Northern Sinfonia, brings his Zehetmair Quartet performing one of the best loved of Beethoven's quartets seminal British jazz saxophonist Andy Sheppard responds to the Fifth Birthday by creating an event inspired by the number five; a handpicked quintet perform a five-set concert, capitalising on the flexibility of the pentagonal Hall Two - on sale NOW! workshops and many more opportunities for people to make music themselves.

Further details, including on sale dates for the above events, to be announced in the media or visit www.thesagegateshead.org.

Sting comments: "I'm delighted that the region where I grew up is now home to such a successful and vibrant music centre. The wonderful surroundings of The Sage Gateshead provide an opportunity for musicians and music lovers alike to experience and participate in live music and music making. I look forward to finally performing there later this year."

Kathryn Tickell (who will be storming ahead in her new role as Artistic Director of Folkworks in December) comments; "I'm delighted to be able to celebrate the success of The Sage Gateshead's first 5 years with a special Birthday concert and can't wait to welcome Sting onto stage to perform at The Sage Gateshead for the first time."

Anthony Sargent, General Director, The Sage Gateshead comments; "Above all the awards and international recognition The Sage Gateshead has won in these first five teeming years, more rewarding still is the way it has so quickly been taken to the heart of our local community. It was our local community who unforgettably opened The Sage Gateshead that frosty December night in 2004, and we've designed this celebratory weekend, with its wonderful line-up of exceptional musicians, particularly with our local communities, audiences and learners in mind. The Sage Gateshead is their centre, and this is their 5th birthday party just as much as it marks the coming of age of Britain's most exciting new music centre."

Cllr Mick Henry, Leader of Gateshead Council said; "In just five years, The Sage Gateshead has become part of the physical and cultural landscape of Gateshead Quayside and indeed of the whole North East region. I think the real proof of this success is that it's now impossible to think of the Gateshead skyline without this fabulous building. There's a fantastic programme of events planned to celebrate this important anniversary which will excite the residents of Gateshead and the many visitors from outside the area."

Mark Robinson, Executive Director, Arts Council England, North East said; "The Arts Council England, North East is delighted with the ongoing success of The Sage Gateshead. We are proud of our investment in this world-class music venue which has pioneered innovative approaches to learning and participation as well as providing a fitting home for orchestra of The Sage Gateshead, Northern Sinfonia, and bringing internationally renowned musicians to the region. The range of facilities available at The Sage Gateshead gives thousands of opportunities for participation in music to all manner of people from across and outside of the region."

History:

The Sage Gateshead opened at 5pm on Friday 17th December 2004 to crowds of Northeast people waiting to catch a glimpse inside the stunning Norman Foster building and experience this much talked about inclusive musical party; 15,000 people in total over a weekend full of live performance and participatory events were able to say that they were part of the opening of The Sage Gateshead.

Sting's Cherrytree Records session...

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:36:10 -0400

Sting recently recorded several songs at the Cherrytree House for Cherrytree Records. You can check out a performance of 'Fragile' and a background video of Sting's visit to the Cherrytree House now at www.cherrytreerecords.com/ with a third video of 'Message In A Bottle' to come on Monday, June 8.

Remember that you can check out Cherrytree Radio's awesome brand of eclectic tunes at www.cherrytreerecords.com/radio/ (or simply click on the link on Sting's home page so that you can listen whilst browsing the web!)

Andy Summers photo exhibitions in Sydney and Los Angeles...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:34:12 -0400

Andy has two further photography exhibitions of his 'Desirer Walks The Streets' work coming up in Los Angeles and Sydney. Details as follows:

Australia Exhibition of Photography

Desirer Walks the Streets
Photography Exhibition
June 4-30, 2009

Blender Gallery
16 Elizabeth Street
Paddington, Sydney, NSW
+61 2 9380 7080

and

Los Angeles Exhibition of Photography

Desirer Walks the Streets
Photography Exhibition
June 13-September 3, 2009

Sarah Lee Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave. #T1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310-829-4938

Sting to perform at Québec City Summer Festival, July 18...

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:06:57 -0400

Sting will be performing at the Québec City Summer Festival in Canada on Saturday, July 18.

Now in its 42nd year, the Québec City Summer Festival continues to turn heads, bring the crowds to their feet, and attract music lovers from far and wide. The party will kick off and wrap up en français with two of Québec's hottest acts, The Lost Fingers and Pierre Lapointe. In the days between, four international sensations -- NTM, Kiss, Plácido Domingo, and Sting -- will bring their talent and energy to the Plains of Abraham!

At other venues around the city, Jeff Beck, Beirut, Sergent Garcia, and Girl Talk are sure to wow audiences with their musical prowess.

"With such a prestigious lineup, the Québec City Summer Festival has staked its claim as the greatest outdoor music event in Canada," noted executive director Daniel Gélinas. "Every year, we pull out all the stops to attract national and international music stars and offer original, exclusive, and one-of-a-kind programming that, from one edition to the next, has helped make Québec City a prime summer destination, and this festival, a unique urban event."

"Thanks to government support, especially from new contributor Industry Canada, we are able to ratchet up the quality even more. We have also received considerable financial assistance from Desjardins to present the five headline Desjardins acts," added Marie-France Poulin, chair of the Québec City Summer Festival Board of Directors.

STING, Saturday, July 18
Bell Stage on the Plains of Abraham

Composer, singer, actor, activist - Sting has won universal acclaim in all these roles, but defies easy labeling. He first rose to fame as the lead singer and bassist for the rock group The Police, then went on to establish an incredibly successful solo career. Sting has evolved into one of the world's most distinctive and highly respected performers, collecting 16 Grammy awards and selling over 100 million albums worldwide.

A show given only in Quebec, from Ontario to the Maritime provinces.

On sale and ticket information will be posted shortly.

Sting to perform at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods CT, July 19. Tickets go on sale to Sting.com Legacy members on April 22, at noon ET...

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:13:48 -0400

Sting will be performing a one-off concert at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, Ledyard CT on July 19th, and we are holding a Sting.com members-only presale. Tickets go on sale to Sting.com Legacy members on April 22, at noon ET. The Legacy window will run from noon-3pm ET and at 3pm will open up until 5pm on April 23 for all other members.

Please visit the Sting.com tickets page at that time to participate in this fan club sale. Tickets go on public sale via www.mgmatfoxwoods.com on April 24 at 8am ET.

The band line-up for the performance is Sting, Dominic Miller, David Sancious and Josh Freese.

New to presales? Please take a moment to read through the presale FAQ.

Andy Summers will be in a panel discussion of photography with Ralph Gibson and Danny Clinch in Toronto, June 6...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:21:39 -0400

Andy Summers will be in a panel discussion of photography with Ralph Gibson and Danny Clinch moderated by Robert Enright on Saturday June 6, at 10.30am in Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West Toronto.

Andy's new book 'Desirer Walks the Streets' will be available at Jackman Hall and Pages bookstore.

The exhibition of photography will take place in Yonge - Dundas square June 5th - 14th.

Andy Summers booksigning, Nunnington Hall, 29 April...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:01:00 -0400

Andy Summers will be holding a booksigning on April 29 at Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire where he will be signing copies of his new book 'Desirer Walks The Streets'.

Access to the signing between 3-4pm is available upon purchase of the book.

Nunnington Hall will be hosting a photography exhibition of Andy's work from 'Desirer Walks The Streets' between April 30 and June 7.

More information on the history and location of Nunnington Hall can be found at www.nationaltrust.org.uk.

Sting and Trudie to appear at Hay Festival, May 31...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:09:48 -0400

On 31 May 2009 following a preview screening of Twin Spirits there will be a special discussion with Sting and Trudie Styler culminating with a Q&A open to attendees.

Twin Spirits is a subtle and moving stage piece which tells the story of the passionate romance and subsequent marriage between composer Robert Schumann and piano protégé Clara Wieck. Sting and Trudie Styler read from the letters between Robert and Clara while their story is narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi, interwoven with music performed by a cast of international singers and musicians.

"This love story - the relationship and the tragedy - provides a great introduction for people who don't normally listen to classical music. Hearing the Schumanns' music at the same time as telling their story is a very intimate, engaging and emotional experience." Sting

"When we started on this adventure with Twin Spirits, I was profoundly moved by the richness and power of the narrative. The passion of Robert and Clara's love transcends the ages. It is a wonderful and moving story which I believe remains fascinating and relevant to today's world." Trudie Styler

5.30pm, SONY Screen, £3 The Royal Opera House and Opus Arte present Twin Spirits. A preview screening of John Caird's film which tells, in words and music, the story of love and tragedy in the lives of Robert and Clara Schumann, read by Sting and Trudie Styler.

[356] 7pm, Barclays Wealth Pavilion, £10 Trudie Styler & Sting talk to James Jolly 'Twin Spirits' The actress and the musician discuss the story of Robert and Clara Schumann, and their own collaboration in the Royal Opera House project. Sponsored by Castle House Hotel.

For more information on booking etc, please visit http://www.hayfestival.com/.