On Saturday, Sting was a guest at the Dresden Messehalle as part of the Dresden Music Festival "Horizonte." At the start of his tour, he skillfully built bridges to decades of his musical success story.
 

Dresden. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday evening, the sold-out audience at Dresden's Messehalle falls silent. First: Luxembourger Chris Maas, known as the touring drummer for the folk-rock band Mumford and Sons, starts on the snare drum. Then two: Guitarist Dominic Miller, a regular Sting member since 1991, enters the stage from the left with his worn-out Fender. Then three: Global superstar Sting—understated yet incredibly stylish, dressed entirely in white, from his shoes to his jeans to his shirt, casually adjusting his black electric bass—opens the evening with "Voices Inside My Head." A glance at the trio not only immediately explains the title of the current tour, "Sting 3.0," but also recalls the opening song from the third studio album "Zenyatta Mondatta" by the band The Police, with whom Sting enjoyed his greatest successes from 1979 to 1986, as the same lineup. Looking across the rows of seats, it quickly becomes clear that many of the concertgoers in those years celebrated their youth with songs like the band's 1979 number one hit "Message in a Bottle." The lighting colors the stage a rich yellow-gold, and the knowledgeable audience recognizes Sting's "Fields of Gold" from the first bars.

After this hit-heavy epilogue, the singer reveals to the audience that the concert is the kickoff of his new tour and that he had only written the setlist for the evening that morning. He knew immediately how it should begin and how it should end. But the in-between parts were probably quite difficult for him. With this large number of released songs from a decades-long success story in the music business, he leaves the following program to chance. And so the songs are simply conjured out of the hat. It goes in turn. Dominic Miller pulls out "Never Coming Home" (2003), Chris Maas gives us "When The Angels Fall" (1991), and Sting, with a touch of his black cowboy hat, contributes "A Thousand Years" (1999).

After four more more or less familiar random songs, he finally pulls out the last few snippets and calls it a day. He immediately breaks the attentive silence that had settled in the audience during the last few songs with "I Can't Stand Losing You." Hits follow seamlessly with songs like "Desert Rose," "Shape of my Heart," and "Roxanne." The audience leaves their seats and streams to the front of the stage. For the remaining hour, they sing, clap, dance, and cheer. For the final encore of the evening, Sting finally switches to guitar, sits down on a barstool, and sends the concertgoers off into the night with "Fragile."

(c) DNN by Maxi Wollner